my first saison...

This was THREE MONTHS in the primary!!

But now I know where that apricot flavor in Magic Hat 9 comes from

• 5# Rye Malt
• 5# Red Wheat
• 5# Golden Promise
• 0.5 oz Simcoe, first wort
• Wyeast 3724

• OG 1.067 
• FG  1.010
• 7.6% ABV

Started in June, finished in November... I kept reading that this yeast would stall but to just be patient...

It never actually stalled...just slowed incredibly to where it was dropping 1 gravity point a week or so.

First month or so of fermentation was between 80 and 82 F

But it's really nice.  Has that full apricot nose and flavor that you get from Magic Hat...

When I do it again, I might change out the rye...that's the one oddity...rye...apricot...hmmm.

On the other hand, you can taste each of the flavors distinctly...apricot and rye...

Fun.

BrewDay - 2013 - get started!

23 Feb 2013 -> next BrewDay.

This years game -> Calypso Hops.
Make a recipe using

• Single base malt, your choice.
• Calypso hops (only)
• Yeast, your choice
• No more than 2 specialty grains

Bring it to BrewDay to share and sample.

See you there.

Head Demagnitizer - a session mead

A very nice session mead.  Dry hopped with cinnamon bark and orange zest.

I was originally going to call it "grandpa's love potion"....seemed like a nice name...so I went to start the label.

I thought I'd find myself a nice not-quite-naked grandpa centerfold picture and use it as the backdrop for the label.  Kind of like that old Burt Reynolds centerfold (for those of you old enough or pop culturally aware enough to remember that)...so a nice gray haired, pot bellied Grandpa....towel carefully draped over any offense parts...

Seemed like a gag kind of label for a nice summer session mead...something at the lake...hot summer day, cold sparkling mead, laughing and fishing...that kind of thing.

So I put "naked grandpa" into google's image search.

Don't do that.

If there's one takeaway here, it's that you never, ever, ever want to put 'naked grandpa' into a safe-search-off image search.

Before the images could even finish loading on the first screen, the only thing I could think of was that i could never un-see some of these things...I needed a head demagnitizer for what's between my ears.

So there you have it.  A nice mead, I would make the mead again any time...but I will never, ever, ever go searching for images of naked grandpas.

Burning Mead

A nice session mead. 

Really, really bare bones recipe, honey, water, energizer, yeast (D47)....but then dry hopped with two LARGE roasted jalapenos.

All the heat is in the back of your throat, the roasted jalapeno taste is very subdued.

But there's enough heat that you want to take another sip, right quick.  Not burning hot...just a nice smooth back-of-the-throat heat.

Just enough priming sugar to make it sparkling, no aging required.

I would do this again.

Its not beer

Its not even alcoholic.

But it IS fermented.  Hoosier vegetarian rootcrop kimchi.

Napa Cabbage, radishes, turnips, onions, ginger.  Naturally fermented for a week and then canned.  No fish paste...no, no. no. 

I DO usually cheat, just a bit, and add some vinegar near the end of fermentation....but just a tiny splash.

Yum.

Some things are just uncalled for...

They're so wrong, so misguided, that you don't even know where to start.

There I was, minding my own business, and I clicked a link to read a beer review of Upland's Double IPA.

 (image lifted from Upland's website and used without permission!)

And I got slammed with a virus.  Internet Security 2012.

Now I'm a trained professional....I did all those things you have to do and the virus is gone and the pc is intact, etc. etc.

But a virus?  On a beer review?  Of an Indiana beer?  A GOOD beer? That's just wrong.

What type of scurvy b*st*rd would load a virus on a beer review page?

Twisted. 

Spruce beer - a revolutionary brew

Looks good, doesn't it?

Well let me tell you about it.

First, a bit of history...or, maybe, a bit of myth.  We could use a history buff here...where's Ken McCluskey when you need him?

Anyway, as I heard it, back in the day, before things started getting hinchy with England, american barley was considered inferior...and American hops were pretty much considered weeds.  So there was no brewing infrastructure here...if you wanted beer, like tea, it came from England...and if you wanted malted barley or hops, those came from England too.

Well...the time came when we weren't doing that any more...not bringing stuff in from England...and we had no malting and kilning facilities here....but we needed BEER!

What we did have, in great supply, was molasses from the sugar cane fields down south and we had a king's ransom in pine trees.  So Americans did what they've always done...they improvised.  Spruce beer with molasses as the fermentable and spruce or pine tips as the bittering agent.

So I decided to make some.

Molasses and spruce tips and bread yeast.  And it fermented out.  And it was nasty.  Incredibly nasty.  Like going out an gnawing on a pine tree, but with a big, big kick.

So I refined my recipe.  Less pine and a decent yeast (Nottingham).  Batch 2. 

Still nasty.  Undrinkable.  I've seen grown men that drink after shave (don't ask, it was a long time ago) that wouldn't have touched this stuff.

I told myself it was a novelty brew....  didn't work.  still nasty.

I gave it a year to bottle condition.  didn't work.  still nasty.

So it's been three years now and I thought that surely it had mellowed so I cracked a bottle over the weekend.

It hasn't mellowed.  Not a bit.

Its easy to believe that this, truly, is the beer that won the Revolutionary War.  Not only will swilling it put you in an ill humor and go looking for someone who needs an ass whuppin...but if that ass whuppin means that there might, possibly, conceivably, be some decent beer coming to town...well anyone worth their salt is going to take up arms.

The only, and I mean ONLY, redeeming feature is that this beer makes outstanding bread.

No.  I don't know why.  Don't have a clue.  You can't drink it, but the bread is legendary.