Cascade and amber light early tastings

I took a 6-pk of the cascade home last Friday and threw 3 in the fridge. Numbers 4 and 5 were thrown in on Monday. This would correspond to 5 and 8 days in the bottle respectively. I knew they were young, but I was looking forward to sharing my first partial mash with family. Wellllll, they needed another few days (3 actually). Keep in mind, this beer was dry-hopped on an oz of untreated Cascade cones for 4 weeks. The aroma was ridiculous. That was the biggest problem with the young beers. Carb was light but present, flavors were as to be expected, but you had to hold your breath to get to the beer in your glass. The aroma was good, but just too much there.

Ok, well, Sean said he was cracking a bottle tonight so I threw number 6 in the freezer when I got home from Peoples (hey, it's thursday). Just 3 more days at room temp has tempered this beer into its true potential. The aroma is present in the perfect amount, and is still excellent. The flavor is balanced and light. If I did this beer again, I'd actually get more aggressive on the malt side and leave the hop bill alone (yes, you read that right...and no, I haven't gone insane). The malts just don't have any complexity. They just stand up and say "hey, I'm a beer!" then subside into the Cascade-y goodness. Yes, it's meant to be a beer that highlights the varied flavors/aromas of Cascade hops (3 additions plus dry-hop), but I'd still prefer a little more beer-ness to it.

That being said, I really want to mail a current bottle back to MI with a note attached saying "This is what I was supposed to taste like." I think one more week and this beer will be in its prime.

Now, the amber light. When I got the original gravity reading I was devastated. This was the first time I'd tried something brewing and had it go wrong. This was the first not-kit beer I've ever brewed. The first beers from the pigs didn't help my self esteem either. Sweet sweet sweet. And that awful finish...gross. Well, got back to Lafayette yesterday, which would mean the pig's been chillin for 10ish days. Poured a pint and threw it back. OH MY GOOD LORD. It's aged into a good beer! Yeah, it's still 3% but whatever. Beer is not about just getting drunk, that's just an occasional happy consequence. Beer is history, variety, skill and experimentation. The malt flavors are significantly more complex...not just sweet. The finish did eventually dry out, without being overly hoppy, which is exactly what I aimed for.

I think my next beer is going to be a Rye-IPA. It's unfortunate that I'm doing this so soon after Peoples came out with a Rye-APA, but it's been rattling around my head for a while. I need to actually sit down and come up with a plan for this brewing experiment I'm doing. On one hand, I enjoy the challenge of brewing to a style, but twisting it just a touch. On the other hand, there are a lot of styles where I don't like the average commercial examples. If I don't like the commercial examples, I'm not exactly dying to try my homebrew attempts. The beer drinker in me is just fine doing umpteen million batches of McLuckey Ale and developing a partial mash equivalent to SeaWard...but the experimentalist in me would get bored really fast.

-J

Figured it out

So, had a couple surprises with the tire change that kept me in town an extra day. Decided to brew.

Boil is coming on as I type, but I took a pre-boil gravity...1.048!! Right on target for the amber. Finally figured out my issues...my thermometer reads way low in the mash...like 8-10 deg low. I just let this one do what it wanted, pretty much like the cascade, which turned out well. Got it to "160" in the cool parts and just turned the heat off and put the lid on. Think I finally got this partial mash figured out.

Boom baby.

I have consumed a legend.

Yesterday I drank a legend. A small sample of Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout. It is a revision of their famous coffee stout (Breakfast Stout), emphasizing chocolate notes along with the big robust coffee flavor. It is then aged in barrels that were used once to age bourbon, then found a second life aging maple syrup. The final beer was 10.4% and sold in 750 ml bottles which were impossible to find. The STATE of Indiana got 40 cases, with Tippecanoe county getting 2 (case of 750's is only 12). Midland county got 2...BOTTLES. These beers are listing and selling on eBay for $90-120 a bottle...and Sean paid retail for his.

$200 for 2 here!

There were a few novice beer drinkers at the Peoples bar, who were very confused as to what was happening (and really loved my growler). Sean hands me the bottle and the first thing I do is post a picture of it on facebook. When he hands me my snifter I cradled it like a Faberge egg. I spent several minutes just holding it and smelling the glorious black concoction from Grand Rapids...allowing it to warm up closer to room temperature.

The smell was epic. Oak, coffee, chocolate, maple syrup and alcohol, all reporting front and center. The flavor did not disappoint. I think the most complex beer I'd ever had to this point was Bell's 10K...with all 100+ ingredients. CBS might have 10 ingredients and it put 10K to shame in terms of complexity. Every sip was different as I tried to focus on different parts of the flavor profile. Mouthfeel, carbonation, everything was as an Imperial Stout should be. I will definitely be more aggressive next time this beer comes out. That being said, I may be graduated before this beast shows again...at which point maybe I'll snag an eBay bottle.

So, my first growler brew was interesting. Got mediocre conversion, then had an adventure trying to boil down. My goal was 0.75 gallons post boil. I ran the numbers on my preboil and had like 1.5 gallons...crap. Gravity at this point was like 1.05 After about 45 mins of boiling I noticed it was getting low and threw the hops in. After 45 mins of the hop boil I noticed it was getting REALLY low. I grabbed a sample and took a gravity...1.15!!! Killed the hop boil and filtered some top up water to get me to 0.75ish gal...gravity fell to 1.08, which is lower than I wanted. Cooled and went to fill the growlers. Remembered about an hour into this process that I forgot to account for how much water was stuck in the grains. n00b mistake right there.

Well, found that a size 6 stopper does work in a growler, but with the hole drilled the walls are a bit flimsy. Tried to put the airlock into the stopper after putting it in the growler...shoved stopper into the growler. Dump wort back into (hopefully still sanitized) boil kettle, sani some pliers, retrieve stopper, sani stopper, dump the beer back into growler, put assembled airlock-stopper into growler. That was about 2 mins. Guess who won't be surprised to see that growler get infected? After that fiasco the second growler went much easier. Some signs of fermentation at the moment, and both are going the same rate, so maybe I got lucky. There's a couple pieces of equipment I need to get to make the growler setup go easier. All that said, a beer was successfully made, and it should be ~8%.

The Cascade pale ale was fantastic going into bottles. Once again, dry hopping on whole leaf is the way to go. So much so that as soon as I bottled that beer I grabbed two, drove down to Peoples and offered them to Sean in exchange for another oz of that whole leaf Cascade (in case I do brew the new Amber, I might do 1/2 and 1/2 5 min and dry). I may dry-hop every beer I make from here on out.

The Amber light turned out ok after cooling down and carbing in the pig. Not a great beer, but not a bad beer for sitting here on a Monday night writing this up and watchin' football.

-James

various updates

So, after cooking for two x-mas parties week before last, the kitchen wasn't ready for brewery duty last weekend. I did bottle the Amber light yesterday, bottling cascade today (just enough bottles), and brewing the RIS tonight.

I pulled the first couple oz of Amber light off of the pig...no carb yet. The flavor is all over the place. Very sweet initially, with a little hop character in the middle and a pretty gnarly finish. After a bit of conditioning hopefully the finish will mellow out. The body is like water, pretty much what I expect for 2.8%.

Yesterday was People's 2nd anniversary bash and they rolled out their 2nd AnniversaRYE pale ale. It's just that, a sessionable 4.9% Rye pale ale. It is very good, with the rye just adding a little spice to a good pale. Perfect body for 4.9% makes for a beer you can down pint after pint over good conversation.

Today Sean is going to break out his CBS at 3:30, expect details on that later.

-J

Seaward PDI pts

Seaward definitely picked up a couple PDI pts at the McLuck holiday get together last night. First of which was just awful timing. I had just won a very close Wii sports resort sword fighting match and threw a fist pump...just as Bossman was leaving the party. It literally was "YEAH, oh bye Scott." Yup...starting my unemployed career tomorrow morning I bet. Second PDI was telling Zach to bring Manhattan fixin's. I am not a smart human being. Now to recover my car.

Bottling today at some point. Also gonna brew, dunno if I'm going to do the Amber or my mini Russian Imperial Stout. Probably the RIS since the Amber light is what I'm bottling...straight from the primary. After bottling the Amber light I'll inventory the bottles and find a way to bottle the Cascade Pale (It's been dryhopping 3 weeks now).

Had my first bottle failure last night. Reusing bottles does run the risk of a top failure...and this one failed straight into my finger.
-J

Seaward tasting notes

First bottle of Seaward is carbed after 8 days in the bottle. I started drinking it with my dinner, which was venison steaks from one of my dad's deer cooked up in butter with a touch of garlic and salt...absolutely delicious. This beer goes extremely well with it, accentuating both the beer and the venison.

Now...the beer. My palate's returned to normal so this is the unadulterated tasting of this very fresh 6.8% 7 hopped IPA. As a reminder, this is a single American IPA styled beer with a touch of colored cara malt to get the color approaching amber. The highlight was the 1 oz each of 7 "C" hops. Crystal, Columbus, Cascade, Centenniel, Citra, Chinook, and Cluster hops were the victims, and my batch was dry-hopped on 1 oz of whole leaf citra for 2 weeks.

The color is beautiful. It's somewhere between Two Hearted (a very pale IPA) and Moundbuilder (more typical amber color). The smell is pretty good. I was hoping for more hop aroma, but what is there is really good. The cascade, centenniel and citras were the last few additions, so it is dominated with citrus notes.

The flavor is light and balanced. The hop flavor is almost delicate. The malty sweetness on the finish is definitely delicate. The transitions are smooth and complex. There is a grapefruit note that pokes through most aggressively, similar to Two hearted, although a little tamer. This beer finished clean and dry.

Our mash temp was a little low (which is why we missed 7%) but that may have actually helped this beer. This ended up lightening the body a little and this beer is borderline sessionable. I'm sure I'll test that statement at some point (Friday Shenanigans perhaps? or possibly watching my Spartans kill some Badgers).

I am unbelievably pleased with how this beer turned out. It's going to be difficult to do it again with the booming popularity of Citra with actual breweries. If I did it again I'd maybe bump all of the hop quantities up to try to make it a little more aggressive. On the flavor alone it actually wouldn't be out of place in an American Pale Ale category, although the ABV obviously places it solidly in the IPA realm.

I'm happy to say that Sean is considering sending some bottles to competition next year. When we get results back I'll bring this beer up again.

-J

Falling behind. Vertical Epic 11.11.11 and Seaward final

So. Stone brewing has a series called "Vertical Epic." I'm not typically a huge huge fan of Stone, but I decided to try out the vertical epic 11.11.11. Here's the brewmaster's take:

Appearance:

The Stone 11.11.11 Vertical Epic Ale pours a deep amber with a cream colored head of foam.

Aroma:

The Belgian yeast strain we used this year has more pronounced banana aromatics than the clove flavors produced by some of the yeast strains we have used in past years. Mixed in with the banana esters are toffee malt notes, hints of spice — clove and cinnamon — and a trace of very mild green chili in the back. The aromas all blend together incredibly well.

Taste:

Upfront, the yeast-derived banana flavors are blended very nicely with toasted and toffee-like malt flavors, fruity esters, and balanced hints of cinnamon. Mid palate the Perle and Pacific Jade hops and the Hatch green chili flavors come through. The beer finishes dry, and bitter with just the most subtle of hints of chili heat and a touch of alcohol.

Overall:

Not your typical chili beer! The famous mild green chilies from the Hatch Valley in New Mexico add layers of delicious flavor with a very mild heat component. The base beer itself is very reminiscent of a European amber beer, with Perle and Pacific Jade hops, Munich and other roasted German and Belgian malts, hopped and brewed to a very Stone like 65 IBU and 9.4% ABV. Cinnamon is a wonderful spice if used judiciously, which we did here-it doesn’t by any means dominate the beer’s flavor, but definitely adds a subtly complex spice note that blends amazingly well with the banana esters and green chili.

I was a wee bit hessitant since it invokes the most risky of brewing spices...chili peppers. I was surprised though. This was a very very complex beer, and I'm sure the pepper and cinnamon were in there, but they simply worked to balance out the rest of this beer (which was a big amber with belgian yeast). This was an excellent beer and was well beyond my expectations.

So, tonight I went to Chumleys for a few, and finally broke down and had Founders Breakfast Stout. I have had bad bad experiences with coffee stouts, and have thus avoided this beer. Well...I am a dumb human being. Your typical coffee stout is a mediocre stout with Maxwell's house thrown in. Founders though? Well lets just say I want like a million pounds of the coffee they used for this...for my coffee. This was an excellent stout combined with fantastic coffee. Introducing myself to this beer may have just taken years off of my life span.

I bottled my batch of Seaward tonight. After the hops stole their share, I got 26 bottles out of it. The final gravity was 1.006, which puts it at 6.7% (can we round it to 7% please?). The flavor is fantastic. Beyond fantastic. If this thing keeps this flavor as it carbonates it will be close to Two Hearted as far as awesomeness. As soon as it carbs I'll share with a select few, but I want to keep most of this to myself.

-James

Failboat.

Well, I just brewed my Amber ale. Failboated the mash pretty badly. Last time I had problems with the temperature running away on me and I obviously overcompensated. Mash temp was typically around 144-150. Obviously got awful conversion because my O.G. is around 1.026. This will put the beer around 3ish% ABV. Flavor and color isn't bad, so at least it will be drinkable.

I think in the future I'll order an extra bag of DME and take a pre-boil gravity reading to see what's going on.

-James

Boom baby...partial mash success

I'm currently transferring my partial mash Cascade pale ale into secondary (onto a nice cozy bed of fresh IN Cascade hops). The specs and taste are better than my wildest dreams. I'm looking at 5.5%, and the flavor is right there with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (which is pretty good). After dry hopping for a bit, this beer should be excellent.

Tomorrow I'm brewing an amber recipe which I developed myself. Look for an update then.

-James

Arctic Panzer Wolf

I bought a bomber of Three Floyds (Munster, IN) Arctic Panzer Wolf. I've had the beer at Chumleys, and it is good. Another reason for the bomber was the fact that the label is epic. It'll definitely go on the cool wall in my house.

No ABV listed on the bottle, but I recall it being around 9%. The smell is a bit confused. Lots of hops, but it's conflicted as to the piney hops with a touch of citrus...just a touch. It smells a little like Hopslam actually...promising.

Color is quite pale for a DIPA. It's a touch darker than what I'd call "straw colored," but not by much at all. Mouthfeel is also a touch lighter than expected.

The flavor seems actually deeper in the bottle than on tap. Much more maltiness there, finally balancing out what seemed to be a poorly balanced beer on tap. The hops do definitely dominate the middle and end of the flavor. It is quite good. I do still prefer dreadnaught (Three Floyds other DIPA) by a significant margin.

-James

Seaward to secondary, and Celebration 2011

Seaward has been racked into my new better bottle for secondary...there may be an oz of citra whole leaf in there to play with the already fantastic flavors. F.G. was 1.007, which puts it at 6.4% ABV.

My cascade pale was bubbling like mad early in the week, but has settled and will probably be put in secondary next Wed. That allows me to brew my Amber ale next weekend. Yes...that means I will 3 beers in various stages of fermentation (at least until I bottle Seaward).

For the usual Friday Shenanigans I brought a 6-pk of Sierra Nevada Celebration ale 2011. This is their winter IPA, using only hops from the fresh harvest. This beer features a ton of Cascade and Centennial hops, in many different additions, and dry hopped. Aroma is quite floral, flavor is good, although a little rough. This beer needs a little more sweetness to balance it out. It's still a good beer, but not the dangerous session beer that two hearted is.

-James

Cascade pale ale

Finally brewed my first partial mash beer. For those keeping track, this leaves two beers in primary in my closet. The mash temp was all over the place (152-165) but it seems to have worked out in the end. The grain bill was a bit much for the setup I had, but I managed pretty well. Original gravity is 1.047 (corrected) which was pretty much what was to be expected. I did alter the recipe a bit in order to highlight the 2 oz of fresh IN Cascade hops that I got. I'm also planning on dry hopping on the second oz, which is sittin in my freezer.

Overall, I'm very happy with this beer. Good clean protein break and good tasting wort. Woot.

-James

Passport done

I entered the week with 5 beers to go on the passport. The only beers of note of all of these were the final two. Lindemans Framboise on tap (oh God yes please!) and Cave Creek Chili Beer. I was looking forward to the Framboise, but I've heard nothing good about the Cave Creek. The Cave Creek was truly awful. My initial description to Zach was "it tastes like spicy toilet water." This was an accurate description. It tasted like a Mexican lager which was worse than Corona or Dos Equis, with a friggin pepper shoved in the bottle when they bottled. Nope. Not kidding. There was a pepper in the bottle. God it was awful.

Couple good things down the line in homebrewing.

Also...Space Cowboy has officially surpassed Hopslam on my list.

-James

Boulevard Smokestack White IPA, Sam Adams Imperial Stout

Another Friday night of shenanigans, another couple of beers.

I bought two bottles, a 12 oz of Sam Adams Imperial Stout and a 750 mL bottle of Boulevard Smokestack series Collarboration No. 2: White IPA (yup, that's the name). First the Stout.

Sam Adams Imperial stout is the first of their Imperial series that I actually enjoyed. This is a fantastic Imperial stout with all the right flavors, and body. The pour is perfect, pitch black, slightly viscous (they pack 308 cals in a single 12 oz bottle) with a small yet thick dark colored head (insert inappropriate joke here). Flavor is spot on as well, full of roasted coffee and dark chocolate notes (and it uses neither coffee nor chocolate). Smooth, easy going beer. Not a session beer at 300 cals and 9.2%.

Now for the White IPA. This is a style which McLuckey ale Mk. II bordered on. This is a Belgian Witbier (tastes like it was and excellent one) which was abused with hops into an IPA. It is a collaboration between Boulevard and Dushetes brewing. The brewers are geniuses (which is why they're doing this as a profession and I'm not), they were able to fix the big problem I had with McLuck Mk. II....losing the spice of the wit. They obviously amped up the coriander, and orange peel, because these flavors still came through. To keep the belgian finish from losing out to the hops they actually added lemongrass and, not joking here, sage. The sage was brilliant. This beer was SPICY, and good. Excellent hop character, nice and citrusy. My only complaint was that the beer seemed to be over-carbed. This beer was impossible to pour properly without slowing the process to a dribble.

Finishing my passport on Wednesday. It'll end with the dreaded cave creek chili beer :(
-James

Now THAT is fermentation

The Seaward is churning away in my closet. And by churning away I mean holy CRAP. We ended up using a live yeast slurry from People's Moundbuilder, and yeast nutrient. I got ~ 4 gallons all said and done in my 6.5 gal carboy, and the krausen is getting mighty close to the top. Not only that, but the yeast have established a circulation in the beer, I can watch the chunks of protein moving around in the beer...it is friggin' alive!

We ended up using 1 oz each of crystal, columbus, cluster, cascade, centennial, chinook and citra hops and a grand total of 29(ish) lbs of grain for a ~9 gallon batch. Mash temp was a little low (148ish), so we "only" got 1.056 out of it. Flavor and color were spot on going into the primary.

That is 7 oz of hops in 10ish gallons. And those are all boiled hops, when Sam Adams claim a lb of hops per barrel (~31 gal) for boston lager, most of those are dry hops (which lend essentially zero bitterness or flavor to the beer, mainly aroma). This gets us close to a 1.5 lbs of boiled hops in a barrel, and if I dry hop my share on 1/2 oz of Citra whole leaf (yum!), we're going to be talking ridiculous flavor profile.

So. Much. Activity.

It is ON!

McLuckey Ale batch 2 turned out deliciously delicious. End.

The Seaward is ON. Hops are purchased and recipe is finalized. It will be brewed on Monday (4 days). Columbus, Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, Citra, Crystal and Cluster hops will be used to represent the 7 seas. The ABV will be in the 7% range. The color and flavor profile are aiming straight at Two-Hearted, perhaps a bit more aggressive. This beer should be awesome, and a bit of a healing exercise. Life is cruel sometimes, but beer is great.

-James

PDI

Took a growler of Space Cowboy and a couple McLuckey Ale mk. II bottles to tailgate yesterday. PDI was +2, so I'll put +1 for both.

Today PDI was +1. Sometimes it doesn't pay to hang on to what's gone and passed.

-J

McLuckey Ale batch 2 Tasting notes

Pig is dead and I've started into bottles on McLuckey Ale 2.

I did share the pig during a get together at Boone's place. It went over pretty well. Boone's reaction was perhaps the best example of what happened.

Me: "Keep in mind, I made this one for me, so I got a little more aggressive with the alcohol and the flavors."

Boone: *takes a swig* "Whoa, this is a lot...uh...sharper than the first one...I LIKE it."

Me: "That was the goal...let's see what 5 of them do..."

Yup. 'Twas good. 'Tis still good. And a great way to manipulate relatively small details in the recipe and see the results. This thing is a witbier by name only. Essentially I just used the light maltiness and subtle spices of a witbier as a blank canvas for my idea of the ideal hop flavor of a light beer. This beer is a touch more bitter than batch 1, but it mostly comes through as a dryness. The aroma is just wrong for the style, but very floral and nice in general. The beer is good throughout. The only weakness is that the adjuct came through towards the end of the beer....definitely alerting you to the fact that something was done to this beer for the pure interest of alcohol.

My next beer is a partial mash kit sitting in the kitchen. Details and awesomeness to follow.

-James

Space Cowboy IIPA

Peoples finally released space cowboy IIPA (or DIPA, whichever you prefer) yesterday. I met up with a Zwierite, his roomy and a first year to partake in this brew I've been hearing about from the brewers.

This is a different recipe from Hop Killa, and uses a new cultivar of hop from New Zealand called Galaxy, thus the extraterrestrial name. It is also dryhopped like whoa hey on Amarillo and Centennials. This beer sits at ~95 IBU and a touch north of 9%. For the first time ever, Peoples has enacted a two snifter limit for this beer...and that was a good idea.

The aroma isn't dominated with the piney notes of bittering hops. Mostly all you get is the floral aroma of the hops used in the dryhop. The flavor is fantastic. Extremely well balanced all the way through the beer. The finish of this beer is fantastic. With every DIPA I've had, except hopslam, there's a good healthy slug of hops and the warm wash of the 9%. This beer doesn't have that. There are hops...there are lots of hops, but it isn't a punch, more of a shove. The flavor transitions nicely into the finish without being abusive. And you don't taste the 9% at all, although you do feel it after a couple snifters.

This beer may have overtaken Hopslam as my favorite. The jury is still out, but as I type this I'm gathering up all my growlers to get filled. I love this beer, and will definitely enjoy it during its short existence amongst us mortal souls.

-J

McLuckey Ale batch 2

I bottled/pigged McLuckey Ale batch 2 Sunday night. I do love the pig. It is well carbed and nice and cold now. The flavors don't get a chance to really mature or blend in such a short amount of time, but for this beer it's not a huge deal, since the flavors are so mild.

I did get roped into bringing the pig to Boone's tomorrow night, but I'll keep the bottles to myself. So, I'm, uh...testing the pig to make sure it's ready for public consumption.

Keep in mind, I bumped up the IBU with an earlier addition, and the ABV with about a pound of corn sugar.

The aroma is just as great as the first time. Color is still darker than it should be, due to the extract nature of the kit. Carbonation is still a little light.

The flavor is purely dominated by the citrusy flavors of the hops. No noticeable bitterness, but I definitely killed off the maltiness (at least when cold). This is definitely over that fine line that I brushed with batch 1. However, I still love it. The result is a very high aroma, complex, slightly sweet beer with no off flavors. The style is unrecognizable. This is almost the opposite of a malt beverage, where there are no hops to perturb the flavor of the malts chosen. This is almost a hop beverage...enough malt to make it bearable and not bitter, but none of the actual malt flavors.

I definitely crossed a line with this beer, but I don't regret it. It's still a flavorful brew, it just doesn't have a style to live in.

-James

(mostly) not beer related

I have had several excellent citrusy IPA and DIPAs recently. Zombie dust, Cream Dream IV, and Hop Whore were all great beers.

McLuckey Ale v.2 is in bottles and the pig. This beer is for personal consumption and tailgating. I expect to raise the PDI.

The main purpose of this post is the following Collegehumor post:
http://www.collegehumor.com/article/6604827/the-47-types-of-hangover

Now...personal experience: not 1 (I'm a bad Michigander), 2 (cancun), 4 (multiple Kent. Derbys), 6, 9 (9 irish bros), 11 (hunting season), 14 (ASMS in SLC), 29 (Spirit Quest), 32, 35, 39, 45 (ASMS in SLC and Denver). Part of me feels that the OSU spirit quest should have its own category. I mean, 2 am baklava doesn't happen often.

Sun King Cream Dream IV

So, got back in town from a wonderful wedding and got back into the local swing of things. Noticed that Black Sparrow had posted that they had a beer from Sun King named "Cream Dream IV." I was intrigued, but not interested...until I went to Sun Kings website. The full name of this beer is "Cream Dream IV: A New Hop." A teasing beer name and Star Wars reference? Yes please.

The description teased further. "A straight forward West-coast imperial IPA, with mango, grapefruit and hints of lime-zest coming from the use of American citrus hops."

I took the hint that this was probably dry hopped with citra hops, and was rewarded. The smell immediately caught me, since it actually smelled a lot like a really strong version of McLuckey Ale. The balance was very good for a 9.4% Hop-centric DIPA (i.e. not as well balanced as Hopslam), and the flavor was spectacular, with a great floral finish. Now, it tasted like there were a lot more of the citrusy American hops besides citra, and citra may not have even been dominant in the dry-hops on the hop bill...but it was definitely there...and I loved it.

-James

Another Smokestack

I'm taking a beer/water break from working on Twitchy (surprises abound with that silly car). Yesterday I bought another of Boulevards Smokestack series named: The Sixth Glass Quadrupel Ale. It sits at 10.5 % at only 22 IBU. Malts malts malts. This beer is also adjuncted with brown sugar, dark sugar and corn sugar (dextrose). The result is a surprisingly light body beer that'll knock ya down pretty quick. It comes in a 750, so it's basically the same as a cheap bottle of wine (similarly priced at 9.50). This beer is delicious. You don't get the adjuncty (new word) off flavors of an american rice lager, but you do get some of the richness from the brown sugar. The finish is ever so slightly sticky, so maybe a touch more hops would clean it up, but part of this beer's charm is the lack of hop flavor.

I've been thinking of my most adventurous beer yet, and it's far enough along the process I'm ok with describing my plan. There is a beer I've run across (can't remember what it was though) that bragged about using hops that start with "C." A lot of the very good American hops out of the northwest have C names (centennial, citra, cascade, etc.). That beer had 4-5 hops, but there are around 10 different C-hops out there, so I've been wanting to do a IPA or DIPA with all 10 of them. I mentioned the idea to Sean and he brought up the idea of doing a collaboration 10 gal all grain batch on his system. At this points, it looks like it's definitely going to happen, and pretty soon after the fresh harvest gets processed and available. I'm not going to go into the hop/grain bill because it's still in the air, but it's looking like a heavy single IPA with somewhere around 7% ABV and a touch over 100 IBU. It will definitely be dryhopped on citra, which will make for a smoother finish than the stats indicate (invariably raising the PDI).

The name is something I love as well. We're going to call this brew "The Seaward." It combines alliteration, humor and history. It sounds like "The C-Word," which would both allude to the C-hops, but also be a double entendre which would be a bit obscene (this will be my "Ice-bitch" brew). The label will have an old square rigged ship with the name being prominent. This would allude to the history of IPAs being overly hopped in order to survive the shipping journey to India from Britain. It's perfect.

-J

McLuckey Ale consumed

As far as I can tell, McLuckey ale was a resounding success. I have one bottle remaining (and I doubt she's going to be a harsh critic ;)) and one bottle which has been delivered but consumption status is unknown (and she might be a harsh critic).

I have just rebrewed it (Sunday evening). I focused on the "steep" temperature (similar to the mash, except it's an extract so it was only 1 lb of specialty grain), and really getting as much of the water out of that grain bag as possible afterwards. Whereas the first McLuckey ale varied between 170 and 150 on the steep temp, I kept this one at 153-159 with an average around 156. Also, I got a little more aggressive on flavor and ABV, since this one is just for me. When I order these kits I get a small bag of corn sugar for priming the bottles. Well, I bought a 5 lb bag of corn sugar long ago, so these small bags have been piling up. So yeah, definitely threw 1 lb of corn sugar in there.

I also got a little more aggressive with the hops. Boiled the first 1/4 oz of Citra 10-15 mins, and the last for 5 mins.

Original gravity definitely shows the efforts paid off. 1.044 corrected. If I get the same final gravity I'll have a 5.4% beer going into bottles. I will also be closer to 45 IBU than the 30 from the previous McLuckey ale batch.

My People's friend and I got to chatting last week about homebrews (this was after the McLuckey BBQ...which was epic). We decided that the best part of homebrewing is a third beer stat. Besides ABV and IBU, homebrews should have an additional statistic...PDI...this stands for Poor Decisions Inspired. This would be a statistic that would increase with the number of batches of the brew, and would have to be normalized to batch size, but only batch size. It would be an interesting stat, since a nice light beer could have a small IBU, mediocre ABV but a high PDI because it would appeal to a wider audience than, say, a big-ass double IPA. The other key to raising your PDI is sharing...which is the biggest point behind homebrewing. As much as I enjoy my beer...I enjoy others enjoying my beer even more.

As far as other beers I've consumed, I've been mainly just working on my passport lately. Lots of beers that are true to their styles, but nothing insane yet.

I'm linking this post to facebook. Please leave anon comments on McLuckey ale, and also tabulate any PDIs that may have happened.

-J

Boulevard Brewing Smokestack Series

I mentioned that I purchased a bottle of Boulevard's Saison-Brett for yesterday's party. Well, it didn't make it to Saturday, I caved on Friday night (it was one of those days). This was bottle number 12059 of the series (yeah, they numbered the bottles). After a few calculations, I'm guessing they made a run of 100 barrels , which would give approximately 18,000 bottles.

The big deal here is that this is a traditional Saison which has brettanomyces purposely added. Brett is a strain of yeast which is traditionally unwanted in the beer, but is historically interesting because it is quite abundant naturally in France and Belgium. Saison is a very old style of beer originating with farmers in Belgium (thus it's other name: farmhouse ale). For these farmers, this beer was their only beer, and thus the only way to wash away the misery of a long day in the fields. The style tends to be fermented hot, and bottle conditioned, both of which make it a very full flavored, yeasty, filling type of beer that ages spectacularly. The style is fortunately making a very solid return in the hobby.

For this beer, they obviously started with an excellent Saison, which is responsible for 95% of the flavor profile. At the very end of the profile, where most beers are supposed to finish with a dry crispness, the Brett character sneaks in. The flavor is very hard to describe, the best way is an earthy tartness. Tart really isn't fair, but there's not really a word for the flavor. What tart is to sour, is what this flavor is to tart (if that makes ANY sense). Awesome beer, well worth the fair chunk of change it cost me.

Well, Zach and I went down to Whole Foods yesterday to search for cheese for the wine and cheese party. As much as I scoff at the organic foods movement, I do have to thank it for Whole Foods. Find me another place where you can reliably find such a good meat, wine, cheese and most importantly, craft beer selection. Prices are appropriate as well.

Enough about that. While wandering around the beer, I saw a second of Boulevard's Smokestack series. This wasn't as limited of a release as the Saison-Brett, but I knew I had to have it...it is Long Strange Tripel (sic). It's a trippel!! I love trippels!! I had to have it, and I am having it as I type.

My first opinion on this beer is that the bottle is too big. Part of the experience of all belgian cask conditioned beers is the art of a belgian pour. Pour it as gently as possible until the last 1/2 inch remains. Swirl the bottle to get the yeast up off the bottom and dump into the center of the beer, generating a perfect head and allowing the yeast to distribute through the beer. Yes, you want a belgian to be cloudy, and that cloudiness is dead yeasties. Selling the beer in a 750 ml bottle is just cruel. I'd rather a two pack of 12 oz bottles and give up the extra 1.4 oz. I'm already using an inappropriate glass, don't make me taste an inappropriately balanced beer.

OK, done ranting (mainly because I'm too the point where I finally got to pour the bottom). This is a good, solid trippel. Like any good trippel the flavor is heavy on the malts. Heavy, heavy on the malts. A sip of this beer strikes you at first with an abundance of mellow sweetness with a velvety smooth mouthfeel. The finish is dominated by the warm wash of the 9% abv.

Overall, so far I am impressed with the Boulevard Smoke Stack series.

-James

Hop Killa Killer

Sooooo....today was National IPA day, and Thursday. That could only mean one thing, IPA pints at Peoples, hell yeah.

Work was especially shitty today (we're hoping what happened is that we froze a chunk of nitrogen and it got stuck in our pulsed valve which caused the valve to get stuck open). The best point was when I was browsing facebook in the afternoon and saw a post from Peoples saying "Happy IPA Day!!! We have a KILLA surprise for you today in the Taproom!!! Come by for a snifter to celebrate National IPA Day... Available in 12oz snifter for $3.50 today..."

This could only mean one thing, a keg of the last batch of da Killa had survived for just this occasion. I ran away from work as soon as I could (5:30) and settled in for a few rounds. I kind of made it my goal to make this beer my second kill in as many weeks. Unfortunately, even with a sixth barrel I need help, and I do have to work so I set myself a reasonable limit and simply paid attention to how much was being poured. I really didn't do a good job of that, because I thought the keg was going to survive the brutal onslaught. Around 15 mins before closing time (8) I ordered my last snifter. About halfway into the pour the keg declared no mas and blew. I had killed Hop Killa.

For the second week in a row I had ruined other people's days. I'm fully expecting to be turned away the next time they have a special brew on tap (although, in my defense I only had one of the barrel aged Notorious BIPs last friday).

By the way...couple month old Hop Killa is fantastic. Nice and mellow.

-J

Dancing with the Devil.

Yeah, it's Tuesday...so sue me. VBS on 52 had a facebook post about a Saison-Brett which they were limiting to one bomber per customer. Uhhh....combine that with the fact that I needed a Gewurtztraminer for Joe's wine and cheese party on Sat and you get a VBS trip on Tuesday.

The Saison-Brett is waiting for a bit. It is in the fridge, because I don't have the discipline to let a $14 beer sit around without trying it. Maybe that'll be my first conquest of the party (it's better than the Franzia others plan on drinking...seriously).

Of course, I scoured the beer selection for others (I don't go to VBS on 52 very often because the beer selection would bankrupt me...they had a $45 beer from Belgium). They had a couple dreadnaughts left, but I actually picked a 12oz of Devil Dancer from Founders. It's their triple IPA, and I had a very very small sample on my Founders trip, since that was my last beer and I wasn't feeling like a 12% beer was going to be a good decision. Skipping it was a good decision on my part...I'm thinking this bottle is a little old, and the flavors are definitely mellower.

I am blogging this as I go now. I'm going to purposely let this warm up...to see how flavors develop over time...and to not get too sleepy. I poured it about 5 mins ago, fridge temp, awesome head and color. At this temp, the hop flavor is a bit abusive.

*note* bottle details on this are 112 IBU (!!!!!) and 12%. That's all the detail on the bottle...although the picture on the label probably would be illegal for a minor to possess. I have had higher IBU beers, but that was the Humo lupa licious, at around 120. That beer, however, is a single IPA and doesn't even pretend to balance the hops. That was a beer you drink after you've been on BL or PBR for too long and forgot what hops were.

OK...beer is warming up now (big beers don't need to be ice cold). The malt flavors are starting to develop a little, and the aroma is intensifying...both of these act to balance the experience. There's a little warming going on person wise too...this beer is awesome. This is what I'd consider cellar temp.

*note* scary fact...they had 4-packs of this...like I said VBS 52 is bad news for my wallet.

Almost up to room temp now. Bad bad BAD idea. Pine sap flavor came from no where...oye. Fortunately I only let a small amount of the beer come to this temp...since the cellar temp was so good. Balance is gone. Flavor is now that of Pine sap and alcohol. No mellowing anywhere...bad bad idea.

So there you go. Flavor transformation of a triple IPA from fridge temp to Brit temp.

-James

Been a slow week

It's been a slow beer week for me. Only new consumptions of note were a few bottles at Chumleys, as I rush to finish my passport before my year is up (30 beers to go, November 9th is the deadline). This makes for interesting times since they won't mark passports on Thursday through Saturday. Basically I just flipped to a page and killed the beers on the page...unfortunately for my productivity I flipped to a belgian page. I killed Chimay Blue and Chimay White. Every Chimay I've had has been really good for the style. Their trippel isn't as good as Westmalle trippel, but it's infinitely more available.

Thursday I managed to kill the last keg of Amazon Princess at the Peoples tasting room. There are still a few kegs scattered around the greater Lafayette area, but they are the lone survivors...and God help them if I happen to be around that establishment. It was a great beer and will be greatly missed until next time.

The Pig of McLuckey ale carbonated in 2 days (have I mentioned that I friggin' love the pig?). This beer is so good. I'm really actually kind of angry that I have to give it all away. I like it so much that I'm actually moving the Zwier Ale back in my queue so that I can repeat the McLuckey ale for personal consumption. Both of my first 5 gallon batches have been primarily handed out (about half of Hop Scare was intended for the family 4th celebration). I feel I can pound out a second McLuck ale for myself and not fall behind too far. I will need a second secondary before I start my Christmas/Winter ale anyways. For batch 2 of the McLuck ale I'm going to get even a little more aggressive. I'm thinking of moving the first citra addition to 10 minutes left in the boil, adding the hallertau with 5 mins and dry hopping the other 1/4 oz of citra. This will make for something that's even a little more aggressive, and potentially even more aromatic.

The Zwier ale is going to be an Amarillo hop based American pale kit from Midwest, with the addition of citra hops in there somewhere. I'm still debating between using them as bittering or aroma hops. The amarillo is supposed to be the highlight of the flavor, but I'm such a huge fan of the citra hops as an aroma hop, and am intrigued by using them as a bittering hop.

At this rate, I'll be looking to go all grain before I can afford to...may have to start some really weird experiments next spring/summer.

-James

McLuckey Ale bottled

Finally got the house cleaned up enough (and delabeled enough bottles) to lay the McLuckey ale down for a couple weeks.

The secondary really worked wonders on this beer. The primary fermentation had stalled at 1.006 (corrected), and the citra hop character was a touch stronger than I wanted. I also did notice a little sweetness I didn't mention earlier, because I was afraid that was going to carry through to the finished product.

Well, final gravity out of the secondary (~1 week) was 1.003 (corrected), sweetness is gone and the hop character is tamed to just a gentle citrusy finish. This raises expected ABV to be 4.5-5%, and as soon as it carbonates, it'll be ready for consumption. This turned out so good I almost don't want to share it with the group, lol. But instead I think I'll just have to repeat this brew again as soon as I knock out the Zwier and winter ale brews. I also had much more efficient recovery with this beer, with final volume being ~4.5 gallons (24 bottles and a full pig).

-J

"McLuckey Ale" report

Finally got back to Lafayette after plenty of shenanigans in MI (final count was 88). Finally racked the McLuckey ale into the secondary and stole myself a hydrometer reading and taste.

Final gravity was 1.005@77F (awesome friggin' yeast). Flavor was more or less exactly where I wanted it...a blue moon style sweetness with a nice dry, floral finish. This was accomplished simply by taking a Belgian Wit recipe and adding 1/4 oz of Citra whole leaf hops at 10 mins and directly after the boil. Citra was a risk with the ridiculous AA content, for such a light beer, but it worked out perfectly. Color is off, but that's something I've noticed with all abstract kits.

I'm probably only going to let it sit in secondary for a few days to drop clear a touch. Need to clean the bottle meanwhile.

-James

I'm up to 80!

I've sampled/imbibed in 80 MI microbrewed beers since my start last Thursday at MBC. The only brews now consumed at the brewery was the one Shorts brew (Huma-lupa-licious, a 140 IBU single IPA) and I got 3 different New Holland beers from Cork 'n Ale to shave some gas money off the trip. The breweries I've visited consist of: Midland Brew Co, BARTS, Mt. Pleasant Brew Co and Mt. Town Station (same owner), Founders, Hop Cat, Hideout, Sullivans, Frankenmuth, and Bell's. I may hit Arcadia on my way out of the state, depending on timing.

Strange spices/adjuncts (so not including things like coriander, orange peel, etc.) I've tried include molasses, french wine oak barrel chips, carrots, parsnips, hemp seed, a ginger beer, and probably some that I'm missing.

Someone at Bell's asked me today if there were any highlights, my answer was simple. I've not yet had a beer that I sent back to the bar. I've had some that I've had some friends finish, but they were true to the style...it just wasn't a style I enjoy a lot. I've has so many good IPAs (both of the Frankenmuth breweries had excellent IPAs) that I've lost track (except for my notes). I've noticed that the French Farmhouse style is coming back into favor here in MI, and I expect that to start spreading through the midwest.

As far as Bells...it was almost a religious experience. The Eccentric Cafe is a must go for any midwest beer geek. Plain and simple.

Done with new places for this trip (probably). Time to wind down, make my brothers bonfire Friday night awesome and accept that it's time to go back to lafayette and get back to work.

-James

Post GR update

So, yesterday I took a day off of traveling, went down to a good beer store and bought a few New Holland varieties so I could strike them off the list. Today was the great GR adventure, with Founders, Hop Cat and Hideout being stricken from the list.

But this isn't a post about the 28 different beers I've sampled over the past 48 hours. This is a post about why I'm doing this MI beer tour. It's the event that is big on my list. It's the same reason I'd drive down to K-zoo and thrash a bunch of underprepped, unexperienced civics in Western MI region races. It's the stories, the people, and the ride across the state. I love the ability to walk into any brewery, belly up to the bar, order a sampler and chat with the folks around me and the guys behind the bar. You meet so many different types of people dealing with so many different life scenarios. I've hung out with everyone from hard up unemployed factory workers, to multi-store business owners worth well into the 7 figures. I've chatted with beer geeks who are years ahead of my knowledge, and explained how a growler works to total novices. I've given beer suggestions to recent 21 year olds, and some folks well into their 60s. How awesome is all of that? And there was beer...can't forget about the beer. The beer was awesome too.

I'm sure I'll write up my notes from Founders at some point...but I felt like the beer was the less important part of today's trip.

-James

MI beer tour: Day 2

Day two of the tour was yesterday. Same people with me, different set of victims.

We went to Mt. Pleasant yesterday. While researching this trip, I was surprised that MP had two breweries. The first was Mt. Pleasant Brewing Company. Walked in, grabbed a sampler and chatted with the poor brewer who was working the bar. The tasting room and brewery were beautiful. This was another one of those warehouse district breweries, which I love, but they have significantly higher production than I'm used to. The brewery is actually owned by the same guy as Mt. Town Station (the other MP brewery), which disappointed me a little bit, but the brewery shows what happens when you start with essentially unlimited capital. It started as a 15 bbl setup, but when they started distributing bottles across the state they had to put in a 30 bbl setup to keep up with demand. Very clean brewhouse.

As for the beers, they had 8 standard beers, and the brew masters special. The standards were a Hefe, pale ale, raspberry wheat, blackberry ale, red, brown, Stout and IPA. The stout, brown, hefe and IPA were all good for the style. I personally don't get their pale, it was too whimpy on the malts to be an English, and too whimpy on the hops to be an American. It basically was just there to be unoffensive, which always results in a beer that does nothing. The Red was fantastic. I'm not a red fan, and actually the others with me (who were red fans) didn't like it that much, so maybe I liked it because it's a bit too big for a red. The malt flavors were very complex, with lots of nice roasted flavors. This beer was hopped perfectly for the style, giving it just a nice clean, dry finish that encourages you to have another drink.

Now, for the fruit beers and the special. The raspberry wheat was fantastic. Something about raspberries make for a great beer. The tartness and sweetness just play well with a light wheat base. The blackberry ale wasn't as good. Blackberries are a little more aggressive, so they were pared with a slightly darker base beer. This led to a little bit of flavor confusion as the fruit flavors fought to keep up with the maltiness of a brown ale.

The special was a "Gruit" beer which uses spices instead of hops. It was an interesting beast, with a nice light body and a hint of jager on the finish. I liked it, but I can see how others would avoid it.

Like I said, the "other" brewery was actually the same person, thus the same beers with the exception of a decent pils. After that was a good night at the dirt track (a good ole American Friday night there). I've pushed the GR trip back to tomorrow, and today I'm going to a good beer store today to grab some beers from the MI breweries I won't make it to.

-J

MI beer tour: Day 1

This concludes day 1 of the MI beer tour.

Brewery #1 was Midland Brewing company (which still seems weird to me). They have definitely come a long way in a year. The beers no longer have as much of that "MBC witch" to them. Their pale ale recently won gold at the world beer expo in Frankenmuth in the english pale category. Now, their pale is very very good...but I wouldn't call it an english pale by a long shot. Maybe they used a different recipe in the competition.

The Hefe and Pils were both good for their style, but nothing really stood out with them.

The nut brown was perhaps the most surprising beer. This is a very hard style to get right, as are most of the malt centric varieties. Not only do you have to try to get the amount of malt right, but the different malts used are where these beers acquire their flavor. Then, of course, you have to give it just enough hops to sharpen up the finish (so it's not syrupy), but not enough to interfere with the flavors. This beer did that, very very well. It was the only one of the beers that made me step back and say Wow.

After this, we went to BARTS in bay city for food and beer. This is really a restaurant that somehow had a 15 bbl brewhouse incorporated someday. But my, do they put out. Three of us ordered the sampler platter, to figure out what pints to move on to. Uhhh....no pints were had. The sampler platter wasn't some whimpy little tray, it was a full waiters tray with 11 five ounce beers. That's 55 oz. That's a crapload of beer. I didn't take my note pad to write them all down, but i'll try to come up with them all. Light, Pils, Kolsch, English Pale, Red, Amber, Dopplebock, Dubbel (10%!!!!), IPA, Stout....uhhh....and something else.

I did not like the Red, so that was redistributed. The stout too was handed off since it took so long to get to it, and it tasted like boiled rat crap when warm.

The beer that really stood out was the Dubbel. It had all of the right flavors in the right spots, but then hit you with the overwhelming, untempered warmth of the 10% ABV. I got into a lively discussion with some bloke about how you can't call a dubbel a tripel or quad just because of the ABV. The styles are brewed in completely different manners, and thus have very different flavors. For example, a true quad wouldn't have the alcohol flavors, since they'd be mellowed under the additional malts.

Well, today it's the two Mt. Pleasant breweries, and finishing the night at the racetrack.

-James

Post 4th update

It's been pretty slow on the new beer front so far. However, I have ordered all of the parts to get my car back to running well (and quietish) so I can start trying out the area.

I did have a couple tri-city brews at the Loons baseball game (they are the official microbrewery of Loons baseball). The primary beer sold there is the Loons ale, which is brewed specifically for the ball park. This is a nice, light bodied (yet still with a fair amount of color) wheat beer. A wonderful simple summer ale, all the flavors balance out nicely. Last year this beer had something weird on the back end of the flavor profile, which fortunately is gone this year. It was either water or yeast based, and apparently they fixed it. One of the best baseball beers I've had.

Since the ballpark is essentially the only place to find tri-city beers (I've been told they don't have a tasting room), I also had one of their specialty beers...their russian imperial stout. Yep, had a Russian Imperial on a 86 degree day in a ballpark, I'm a little crazy. This was actually a very good beer. The flavor profile was very heavy on the chocolate and toffee flavors with a crisp, dry finish indicative of a healthy amount of hops. Aroma and body weren't too overpowering or heavy, which is really the challenge for this type of beer.

Also, yesterday was the big consumption day for my homebrew IPA. It was a total hit with the family and others who got a sample. The flavor finally developed in the bottle to a nice, mellow beer. The flavor profile did end up being closer to an American Pale than a true IPA, but that's not a bad thing. I'm definitely going to brew this beer again, since now I know how long it has to condition. Also, it was well over the 4.8% my hydrometer pegged it at, so it may be time to pull out my other hydrometer and check their calibration. All that's left is the one bottle still conditioning at home, and the bottle we put aside for my brother.

-James

Chumleys and Princess...

Intriguing title, once again. I might finally be getting the hang of this.

Tried two more beers for my passport at Chumley's, Magic Hat #9, and Maudite Red.

Starting with Magic Hat. This is a beer I've seen lots of people drink, but never ventured to try, mainly because it's a middle tier beer on their price list (remember, Bud Light is 3.75). Also, it's listed as a fruit beer....Don't fruit the beer, man. Well, on a whim I decided to knock it out on the passport, and I was definitely rewarded for the risk.

#9 is an interesting beer. I had no idea what to think of it. It looks like a pale ale, it smells like a fruity pale ale, and it tastes like, well, it tastes like Magic Hat #9. There is a hint of what may be either cranberries or cherries, impossible for me to tell since it was actually an undertone of the greater flavors, which were those of a quality American Pale. There was smooth, hoppy and tart all going on in the same sip...it was truly bizarre. But, more importantly, it was good. I'm not sure I'd start with this beer, but it's a decent beer. I do admit, this was beer number 3 of the night, and the previous two were Oberon and an IPA, so I definitely did things in the wrong order which probably made the fruity flavor more mild. Now...beer number 4...that was another story.

Beer number 4 was Maudite Red. This was a bottle, and I'd seen it on the list because I always figured it was a red ale or some such nonsense. Then I glanced at the passport description and kicked myself. By "Red" they mean according to belgian traditions, where Doubles are typically referred to as Reds. This was a BIG belgian double, almost 8% big. And it was delicious. The smell and flavor are both of big, sweet malts. Lots of malts. Tons of malt. However, the finish was nice and dry with just the gentlest hint of some hoppy goodness. This was an awesome beer, well worth the premium price. I may search for this, and it's trippel brother in the shops.

Peoples Amazon Princess is BAAAAAAACK. I love this IPA. I love single (wink) hop variety IPAs. And this one is all Simcoe, which is kind of a strange hop variety to make a single variety beer. Regardless, this beer is spectacular, which is why it is so hunted for in the area. While hanging out in the tasting room I saw around 20-30 pints poured (conservative estimate), and 90% of those were Amazon. This was day one of this batch. The ABV was actually up to 6.8% (from 6.5) without any recipe changes, simply because the yeast was drawn off of another beer. The flavor was very very good, although I am looking forward to it mellowing out a touch. It's definitely smoother than mound builder, and there aren't any truly dominating flavors, allowing you to sample all of the ester-y goodness of the Simcoe. I can't wait for this beer to start being distributed. I'm also happy to see that even though they're bottling and have established "flagship beers," Peoples can still go out there and introduce a small batch which is still different.

Home brew update tomorrow...

-J

Back from Ohio State

Back from June conference number 2, and my brain hurts. Once again, much "networking" occurred...at various watering holes.

Two new brews to report, both from Great Lakes Brewing out of Clevelend. First beer was the "Burning River" pale ale. I'm really not kidding about the name. I guess if you have to live in Ohio, you have to be able to make fun of its disgusting past. The beer was good but not great. It was a maltier American Pale style beer, but balanced pretty well with the cascade hops when you smelled it. Unfortunately, when you drank it, you realized that the Cascades are basically there for aroma only, because they didn't bring a whole lot to the palate (see what I did there? Who all read "plate"?). Price was reasonable, so this goes down as a very good value APA.

The other Great Lakes beer, I'm lucky to remember. This was the night we went on a "Spirit quest" after each and every one of us (except Zach) ran up $40+ bar tabs...at the second bar. This was Tuesday night. That goes to show how seriously we take this whole group bonding thing. (we had baklava at 3 am for the love of all that's sane in this world) Wednesday morning was exactly like the Hangover (first one). None of us had complete memories (except Zach), but we all had partials of the entire night and Zach helped us get it all in the right order.

OK, back to the beer. It was called "Dopplerock," and was, of course, a big German Dopplebock. (yeah, I had a big ass beer before the spirit quest...how am I alive) This was a beautiful beer. Color, mouthfeel, smell and flavor were all spot on for the style. Absolutely wonderful dopple.

Over all, I was impressed with the Great Lakes beers. They're all overpriced here in IN, so I typically don't buy them. But if you have to be stuck in OH, do it with a 6-pack of Great Lakes and life won't seem so bad.

And now for an update on my most recent baby. The Party pig carbonated nicely over the week, so it went in the fridge. I couldn't wait for it to cool so I poured some into a frosted glass. It's slightly warm, so keep that in mind.

The mouthfeel is what really strikes me. I got so used to the rough edges of anything but an ice cold Mr. Beer brew that I began to doubt my own skills. This mouthfeel is velvety. That's right, velvety IPA. The malt flavor is acceptable, could be a little more aggressive. Once again, I point at myself on that. The hop flavor is amazing. It may be light bodied for an IPA, but it's got all the flavor...which means I have created a sessionable IPA...God help us all.

The flavors should continue to mature for a while in the bottles before I take them home for the 4th.

-J

Hop Scare IPA final

Finally bottled my brew today. As I feared originally, I lost about a gallon due to the woefully insufficient stand off on my autosiphon, and my cobbled together primary stand. These will be fixed for the next brew.

Final gravity ended at around 1.014 (really it was 1.0135ish), which put the final ABV at 4.6-4.7%. I was hoping for more, but I'm guessing I just didn't get good conversion of the specialty grains. This problem will also be fixed before the next brew. I also used the cheap dry yeast, which was probably the reason for the high final grav.

The flavor is outstanding, this turned out better than I could have imagined. Straight from the secondary it is already well balanced. Basically as soon as it's carbed, I'll be drinking it.

Final count was a close to 2.5 gallons in the pig and 18 bottles.

Next brew will be the McLuckey ale. I'll order the kit as soon as I get back from OSU, and try to get the brew done before I leave for MI. Timing will leave it in the primary for a touch longer than necessary, but nothing too absurd.

-J

Thursday...Peoples...need I say more?

So, this is essentially a follow up to the Notorious BIP post. Chris Johnson, being the madman he is, decided to take 10 gallons for Notorious and keg it on bourbon barrel oak chips. They tapped the first of the two kegs today, and it died today. Second keg is tomorrow. I had some of the first.

The first thing that hits you is "Hey, where'd the hops go?" But then you are serenaded by the smooth smooth vanilla mellowness on the finish. That's right, apparently the silky vanilla oak flavors will overpower the hoppy bitterness. For hopheads, this is a sad thing....until you realize that by simply aging on lightly charred oak chips you can mellow out even the biggest, most abusive IPA you can imagine. Awesome.

I'm bottling my IPA tomorrow. Hoping the gravity came down a bit.

-James

2011 ASMS in DENVER

So, ASMS was in Denver, so I got to try a few local brews, although not as many as I'd hoped.

The hotel bar served Breckenridge brewery beers, which included the excellent hazed and confused, and several mediocre attempts at the standard styles which don't warrant any comment in this blog. Hazed and confused, however I will comment on. This was an unfiltered, dry hopped, aggressive American Pale Ale. Yep, lotsa qualifiers there that made for a very good beer. Of course the first thing you notice is the color. It's a deep copper, definitely hazy beer. The smell is like any good American Pale, lots of malt, hint of hops. The flavor follows in that balance, good malty taste followed by a hoppy dryness which encourages another gulp immediately. Awesome session beer.

The other Breckenridge worth mentioning was only at the hotel bar, and Glish's suite. The Mojo IPA. IBU wise, this wasn't much for an IPA, but flavor wise it hit the spot. The secret was in the use of only the most floral of hops, which made it kind of feel like you were drinking awesome soaked in rose petals. Definitely citra hops in there, and I'm not sure what else, but it was awesome. Smooth smooth smooth, and at a little over 6%. And when you burped, you burped roses, which was awesome.

As to my brew...I was considering letting it sit in the secondary over OSU, but I've been advised that may be a bit too long, so I will probably bottle in the next few days. Look for an update.

As for my next brew. I'm thinking of doing a belgian wit style (think blue moon), and trying my first hand at labeling. I'm thinking of calling it "McLuckey Ale" and trying to get it bottled before the McLuckey BBQ later this summer so that I can distribute it to the group. I mean, seriously, what other group has their own beer? I think that'd be cool as hell.

A Zwier group ale would have to follow, although I think there's enough fellow beer connoisseurs in that group that I can get away with a bigger beer.

*sorry...thought it best to edit out the angry part of this post*

-James

Notorius B.I.P.

Yep, I spelled the title right. Peoples produced a Black IPA, which is a style I had never heard of before. The first pint I had was actually a nitro tap at Black Sparrow, then Thursday I finally got over to the tasting room for a proper introduction.

Essentially a black IPA is just that, a very dark version of an IPA. What differentiates it from an Imperial Stout is that the color is just color, not an indication of flavor. How can that be? would be the next logical question. Well, with such a new style there is no set of how to make it happen. Peoples employed a cold steep of the colored grains. With a cold steep only the color gets extracted since there is no conversion of the starches. Thus you get a lot of color (this beer is very black) but you don't really bump up the body of the beer. There is some sweetness added just due to the simple sugars already present in the grain, and a lot of those highly colored compounds are flavanoids.

The end result was a delicious beer. Definitely takes the edge off of their Moundbuilder IPA, which is a little rough. However, it's not just a shift in the balance that is brought to this brew, it is a new complexity. You aren't just drinking a maltier tasting IPA, it's more like an IPA with a dash of stout on the front end.

It's a great time to be in the hobby, and this beer proves it.

-James

Whoops, week late

I guess I forgot to post about the first ever Kopacetic beer factory brew spectacular.

Basically, this was an event that my friend from Peoples put together. He was brewing a 10 gal batch of IPA, rounded up a couple bands and had thirty some-odd friends over for a beer party. This resulted in an impromptu beer tasting of a crap load of big beers...and my hopped Mr. Beer IPA (embarrassingly enough). I mean, these people went from tasting $4-6/bottle beers to my slightly modified Mr. Beer kit. It actually went over better than I expected, and I got a few suggestions as to what the weird flavors might be. General consensus was that using a good yeast and a secondary fermenter would have cleaned the beer up. Regardless, at the end of the night my beer was basically dead (only one pint left).

As far as beers I tested, there were highlights and lowlights. Of the highlights was a well aged Dark Lord beer from 3 floyds (they release this beer for a single day each year!). There was also a Bells 25th anniversary (again, this beer is a couple years old, and was spectacular). A fellow homebrewer brought an IPA which was hopped entirely with Citra hops. This hybrid has only been available for a few years and comes out of the Yakima Valley in Washington. This beer was delicious. The hops definitely live up to their name, imparting an extremely powerful grapefruity type flavor to the beer.

As far as lowlights, there was an apricot beer. Awful idea.

And as far as education, there were plenty of belgian "sour" style beers. Some of these were in fact some of Goose Islands big Belgians (Fleur, Matilda, etc) which were brewed with "infected" yeast batches. These batches typically start of as accidental bacterial infestations of perfectly good yeast. However, there is a specific bacteria which takes simple sugars and excretes lactose, imparting a sweetish sour flavor. For the belgian sour style, this is the desired flavor, and is typically attained by simply adding lactose to the fermenter (yeast can't break down lactose). I still can't tell how much I like these styles, they had interesting flavors, and didn't make me sick, but still...sour? In a beer?

Obviously this is only a few of the 25+ new beers I tried. In a party like that not everything is remembered.

-James

Craft Beer week and first 5 gallon batch

So this was the first significant celebration of American Craft Beer week (the market grows a tremendous amount each year), unfortunately I get half pay here in a bit, so I had to take it easy.

The only new beer I had was Back Wood Brewery's (from La Porte, IN) Hop Star IPA. It was an excellent IPA, bordering on a double, but this is where it failed. Stuck halfway between a single and a double IPA this beer has too much hops to be balanced by the meager malts, but without the ABV to make it truly worth it. Once again, a big IPA that fails to balance itself.

Peoples has a new Lemongrass version of their Farmer's Daughter Wheat beer. I always thought that the FD wheat was a clean slate upon which to build an amazing summer beer. The Lemongrass version (actually version 2) is a gigantic step in the right direction. It takes a blank sheet and adds in a bit of the flavor of sunshine. The lemongrass adds a bit of a citrus-y flavor, and significant body to the beer.

As a finale to the week, I just finished brewing my first 5 gallon batch. The kit was the Midwest brewing Hop Scare IPA. The ingredients consisted of 6 lbs (1/2 gal) Gold Liquid Malt extract (LME), 2 lbs of light dry malt extract (DME), and 1 lbs of caravienne malt specialty grains. The hop bill consists of 1 oz Yakima (14.1% A.A.), 1 oz Amarillo (7.2%) and 2 oz cascade (5%). Brew consisted of a 60 min boil with the Amarillo added at 30 and 45 mins, and the cascade added at 55 mins.

Initial flavor of the wort is delicious, with the original gravity at 1.048 I'm looking at a 5.2-5.8% beer. I don't think I got the most out of the caravienne malt, but this was the only hiccup in the whole brew.

-James

Results 1 from Mr.Beer IPA experiment

original gravity for the hopped IPA was 1.033, which is just a touch higher, just from the hopping.

The stock IPA cleared up almost immediately in the keg, so I transferred it to the fridge and poured myself a pint (work really really sucked today). It's surprisingly good for how young it is, and it will be getting better as long as I allow it too. It's really not that hoppy, but definitely does have a drier finish than the stouts I have been making. It has that weird Mr. Beer kick at the end, which is getting on my nerves a bit.

The hopped IPA started fermenting quite aggressively, with significant amounts of foam in the fermenter and lots of fumes in the closet. I sampled the wort and it's got a lot of promise. The centennial hops definitely hit home at the end of the taste.

I'm definitely going to bump up to 5 gal batches soon.

-James

The Mr. Beer IPA experiment

No new consumed beers to mention, just been cycling through the old standbys.

So, the Uber stout experiment taught me about using grains and adjuncts, leaving the only tool left to learn being using actual hops. Best way to test the results of hopping is with an IPA, which doubles as my favorite variety.

Part one of the experiment was to brew a stock Mr. Beer IPA kit. The stock kits are stupidly easy for me now. In fact, I was basically on autopilot. Original gravity was 1.031. I kegged it today at 1.007, resulting in a final ABV of around 4%. I used the house yeast, which was a bad idea. They were very sluggish the entire fermentation, probably not helped by the fact that the furnace was never running (the fermenter is in the utility room). Flavor is damned good though, which is kinda the whole point of the experiment.

Part two is on the burner now. I am boiling 1/4 oz of Centennial hops for 45 mins, then dry hopping during fermentation with the remaining 1/4 oz. The smell in the kitchen is amazing.

I'm very pleased that things are going so smoothly. So pleased, in fact, that I think it is definitely time to start building a 5 gallon setup. Midwest has some affordable kits with quality materials and lots of add-ons available.

The downside of back to back brews is that I'll have to bottle the dry-hopped IPA...or drink very quickly.

I'll post with the gravity results when available.

-James

Little delayed

I meant to post this on Tuesday.

Another Chumleys midwest beer night adventure. Their new Tuesday bartender is actually cuter than the last one.

I decided to finally try a beer that I tend to avoid for purely personal reasons. Leine's Summer Shandy.

I avoid this beer for many reasons.

1.) any midwest craft brew drinker who doesn't drink Oberon for the summer is worthless.

2.) If I'm going to mix lemonade with my beer, I'll buy Warsteiner and make a Radler (german equivalent to shandy).

3.) Leine tends to produce good, but overpriced beers.

Well, turns out I was right on all of these. The Leine Summer Shandy is an excellent copy of a Warsteiner-sprite Radler. Slightly higher abv, but is that the point? There's no way I'd pay close to $8 for a 6-pk when Oberon is $9. And, Oberon is an overall more interesting beer, in my opinion.

Now, in the Chicago area the Leine shandy has a huge following, basically because Bells has been absent in Illinois for ages, and there're still only easing back into the market they were so rudely kicked out of. If Oberon was not an option, I'd have to say that my summer beer selection would alternate between Sam Adams summer ale and this Shandy.

-J

OBERON 2011!!!!

It's Oberon day!

Went to Chumleys after work today to partake in a couple pints. I was too dead after the matches yesterday to make it to the release party last night at midnight.

This year's is spectacular. Last year's batch was extremely fragile, which definitely took away from what the not-skunked beer tasted like. Nothing is more off putting than wondering how skunked the beer would be. The fresh beer last year was spectacular, and that's what I'll compare this years to.

This year's brew was much sweeter...so much so that I was a bit confused. However it isn't a bad sweet. It's still not like blue moon sweet, but sweeter than last years.

All of the rest of the flavor profile is as advertised...pure oberon. The mellow, pleasant flavor of the spices, balanced out by the wheaty earthiness and kiss of hops on the finish. Very awesome.

Last year's unskunked Oberon was slightly better, but it was so hard to find that do to the fragility of the recipe. If this formulation is a little more durable, this will be an amazing oberon season.

-James

Final on St. Pattys Uber Stout

Sounds like we may be drinking and watching games at Boone's place...my responsibility is to bring my beer. It should be ready, I put it in the fridge today and pulled off a pint to check it.

Final gravity (going into keg) was 1.007, getting me close to 5.9 % abv. Analytical chemist in me means I report it as 5.6-5.95%, I read the beginning gravity as 1.0509, and the final as 1.0065 with the last digits being uncertain (+/- 0.0005). I'm very excited about the abv, since I was aiming at 5-6%, and started with a kit capable of 4.6%.

Now, for the flavor profile. If I had my 'druthers, this would sit in the fridge another week, but I don't have that luxury. There are some surprisingly rich flavors here. I remember the unmolested recipe tasted almost exactly like Guinness, which isn't a bad thing, but I wanted a little more richness, more like a Murphy's. I got it. The generous chocolate malt definitely livened up the front end, and brought a fair amount of richness to the start of the flavor. The initial mouthfeel is almost velvety.

The middle of the flavor is pretty typical for stouts...pronounced sweetness with a mellowing smokiness. The end is where I'm a little disappointed (as is usually the case with these Mr. Beer kits). There is a touch of a tartness on the finish. That said, one day in the fridge has already started mellowing this out, so hopefully by Thursday it will be unnoticeable.

The happy part about this finish is the delayed warm wash of significant ABV. I don't doubt the 5.9% number for a second. This beer is potent and could sneak up on the unawares. *evil laughter*

Overall, I'm proud of this brew. I just needed to start it 4 days earlier.

-James

St. Pattys Uber Stout

Technically, my name for this beer violates label laws, good thing I'm not selling bottles.

Another modified Mr. Beer recipe. Ironically I finished off the X-mas Stout while brewing. This is based on the intermediate St. Patty's stout refill kit. I then added 4 cups of corn sugar and steeped 1/4 lb of Chocolate Malt for 30 mins.

Final gravity is at 1.0509, definitely read it right this time, which corresponds to 6.25% potential ABV (I'm aiming at 5-6%). Color and smell is promising.

Final on X-mas stout, Hop-killa 2

So I finally figured out my discrepency with the ABV on the X-mas stout. The third scale on my hydrometer is brix....which is also in %. I was reading the Brix content as the ABV content. Final ABV reading out of the keg (sampke allowed to go flat to eliminate effect of dissolved CO2) was 3.2%. Little disappointing, but makes for an extremely drinkable, and tasty beer.

Peoples came out with the second edition of Hop-killa, their DIPA. Very smooth, which is surprising because it came out at 104 IBU!!! Also very dangerous, since it is 8.5%. On Thursday (pint night), the old Chem Eng professor next to me got royally fucked up by insisting he could handle two after already having some Teddy Mack. Kinda hilarious, although I feel bad for Chris and Jess who had to deal with him.

After work today (yay saturday?) I'm going to brew up my St. Pattys day special. Going to use the chocolate malt again (bit more this time), and a high end safale yeast.

"X-mas Stout"

I just kegged what I'm calling X-mas Stout. Final gravity was 1.003 (damn near water). My triple gauge hygrometer calls that ~5%, but a few online calculators call it 2.8% (??). Mr. Beer says the unmodified kit will be 3.7, and mine should be a bit higher, so I'm tending to believe the hygrometer. I'll do some research tomorrow to figure it out. When the keg is ready, I'll do some research the old fashioned way as well.

-James

brewing, etc...

Just checked my modified Mr. Beer stout. Temp adjusted gravity right now is 1.011, which corresponds to roughly 4.5% abv compared to the original gravity. There is still a bit of a fizz, so it needs a couple days before kegging.

Flavor is better than I expected, very mellow, the chocolate malt definitely hits home.

Last night was a bit of a beer crawl. Started at Peoples, where they had a nitro Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown starts off as an amazing beer (imperial brown ale). Insert a bit of N2 and you have and amazing-er beer. Nitro tends to mellow out anything, and mellowing an already mellow beer makes for a very dangerous beverage. Especially at 7.2% abv.

At peoples I heard rumors of a few places having Amazon Princess IPA left. This was a small batch brewed way back in December which was an amazingly smooth IPA. I drove up to Hunters west, partially to actually get my car warm. At first I was disappointed because they only had "IPA" and Mr. Brown on their board. I asked the bartender which IPA they had (typically the IPA handle is for Mound Builder only) and he said "I think we're still on something or other princess." I forgave him his insult and enjoyed the pint.

Ended up at Chumleys where I ran into the Cooks group and the night went crazy from there...now to bus downtown and recover my car.

revision.

Ironically, the Analytical chemist screwed up his reading. Initial gravity was at 1.021, not at 1.121. 1.121 would be a ridiculous starting gravity...1.021 is kinda sad.

Dreadnaught

Life's been interesting lately. What with me blowing up a $200K instrument and all.

I do feel the need to reiterate the awesomeness that was the Teddy Mack stout...awesome beer.

Last night, after some irish and fun at the club, I stopped off at chumleys. I had noticed on Tuesday that they had a few kegs of Three Floyds (local IN brewery) Dreadnaught DIPA.

I've had this beer before, when it was a featured bomber at Chumley's. It was like $16 for a bomber, but it was spectacular. Shortly after that, this beer made BeerAdvocate's top beer list of all time. So when I realized Chumleys had it on tap, I had to try it.

It was still spectacular. Almost as good as Hopslam, but it misses on the balance a little bit. Good hoppy aroma, no real malts to start, and a smooth, well aged hoppy finish that makes you KNOW that you are drinking something north of 8%ABV. DE-licious.

Also laid down a home brew yesterday. I took my brother's x-mas present, which was a basic Mr. Beer irish stout refill, combined it with some corn sugar as an adjunct, and some actual chocolate malt. Thus begins my foray in hybrid extract and grain brewing.

Ended up using 2.5c of corn sugar, and steeped ~3-4 oz of malt for 20 min in steaming water. Final gravity ended up at 1.121, which was a little depressing, since that only corresponds to a 6% "potential" abv, which would end up at ~4% when finished. However, the adjunct doesn't affect the gravity as much as other fermentables, so it may end up a little better. Regardless, I'm tempted to lay down a backup premium St. Pat's stout refill that I bought, and keg the better of the two.

Teddy Mack Stout

So far it is a great beer year. Still enjoying the Tuesday midwest specials at Chumleys with Hopslam.

Today Peoples came out with yet again another new beer...Teddy Mack stout. Turns out that Teddy Mack owned the original Peoples Brew Co back in Oshkosh WI, in the 1970's. This is an imperial russian stout, which I am normally not a fan of. This, however was spectacular.

Very malty, all the way through. Sweet, smoky, complex, all of the malt flavors you want in a stout. There is just enough hops to finish it off properly and make for a nice, balanced, big, heart warming beer. Perfect for cold snowy days.

Peoples rocks.

Hopslam...on tap

Chumleys is dumb (or awesome) enough to include 12 oz. hopslam as a 3.75 midwest special on Tuesday. AMAZING. That's the best deal south of Crunchy's mug night with hopslam. I had 3 during the MSU vs Illinois game, then another afterwards...for $15!!! This is amazing. The most hilarious thing was the fact that the frat boy next to me at the bar was paying $3.75 a bottle for bud light!!!! I couldn't bring myself to inform him of the fact I was paying the same amount for the same volume of a beer which was world class.

I then also heard his neighbor refer to two hearted as "two farted" ale. I almost punched him. That is an inexcusable attack on a noble, brilliant, well balanced beer, just because you're fucking used to shit like natty light. Taste the beer. If you don't like beer? Go back to natty light and get the fuck out of a place like Chumleys. 50 taps, 101 bottles, and not a natty light amongst them. This is my domain, get the fuck out frat boy.

IPA day

Went to chumleys to work on my passport a bit (embarrassingly, I forgot today was Wed, not Tue and was expecting 3.25 midwest beers). Decided that since today was so great (work wise) I'd go ahead and hit up two of the alltime best IPAs (neither of which were stamped).

First up...Dogfish Head 90 min IPA. I've had 60, but never the 90. They claim that the 90 is actually mellower...and you know what, they're right! The 90 was extremely well balanced with an interestingly sweet malt start, with a sharp hoppy finish. Didn't feel the 9% ABV, which is always a nice (but dangerous) thing. Nice head, beautiful lacing. All in all, an excellent, if overpriced, beer. Even at Chumley's this is $0.50 more per pint than a Two Hearted.

Next beer, and I'm embarrassed to admit this was not my first passport stamp...Two Hearted. Anybody who knows me knows about my love for this beer....and it was spectacular. Good beer to flirt with the bartender over, lol.

-J

It's Hopslam day!

Hopslam day 2011. This is my unofficial Beer new year, since it is still my favorite brew and gives a hint as to what all beers must strive for this year.

2010 was an amazing beer year, with so many Peoples brews and a lot of other variety. Hell, even MIDLAND had a brewery open...it wasn't the one that was supposed to, but it's pretty cool nonetheless. Oberon was a little off, winter white was way off, but other beers from other companies made up for it. I'll try to update this a little more often, and include some more of my homebrew escapades.

As far as homebrewing, I'm starting to expand my technique a little bit. Still sticking with the 2 gallon Mr. Beer batches, but I'm throwing a few tricks at it. This time I brewed the Mr. Beer fall seasonal, a double american brown at 6.5%. A special recipe calls for a special trick. My trick this time was to copy People's water strategy (straight tap water through a charcoal filter), and try a 2.5 gallon kegging setup known as a Party Pig. This transformed the beer. It only had to sit in the keg/pig for a week before it was drinkable, and it gets better day by day. There is still a slight witch, but I think I left it in the fermenter for a couple days too long and it leached something from the plastic. It's still the best I've made, and after one or two, you don't notice the witch.

Now, the main attraction, Hopslam 2011.

Village Bottle Shoppe #1 had a few 6-packs left (btw, they still have 10,000, so I may need to stock up) on this, the first day of distribution. Same price as last year, $19.25 for a six pack.

Poured it into a nice clean mug. Same beautiful color as always, deep amber with hints of a harsh winter sunshine.

The smell is even smoother than last year...little less thick. It's more of a light pine forest breeze than the traditional whipping with a white pine switch. The smoothness follows through in the always delightful flavor. As is always a surprise with DIPAs, there is MALT FLAVOR!!! Oh my...some breweries act like that's a sin. But then, the smooth transfer into the complex bitterness that leaves the tongue confused as to where all this flavor came from. It then dies into a much lighter than usual stickiness that is the curse of all DIPAs.

2011 is going to be Spectacular.