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