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