Review of "Double Down" Scottish 80/~ Ale

I must admit that this beer had me a bit concerned. As you may have already read, the day I brewed it was very eventful. Add to that experience that I have read a couple of negative reviews of the recipe I used and early tastes of the beer were a bit cloyingly sweet. However, the beer rallied nicely about a month after I brewed it and I am very happy with it right now. It is definitely a session beer and I am enjoying a pint of it right now.

Brewed: 9/20/2008
Kegged: 9/27/2008
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.018
IBU: 15
Alcohol By Volume: 4.1%
Carbonation Volume: 2.5 (13 psi at 40 degrees F)

The beer pours a brownish color with strong red highlights. It is fairly clear, when held up to a strong light, though under normal conditions, it appears opaque due to its dark color. The beer has a moderate amount of off-white head on it, which dissipates over a few minutes, leaving a light film on top of the beer. This film makes interesting patterns on the glass, as you enjoy the pint, which is called "Belgian lace." The 80/~ has a malty aroma, mixed with something nutty, maybe like toasted almonds. Hop aroma is completely absent from this beer, which is as expect from the style and lack of aroma hops.

The beer has a strong malt flavor. This is the first thing that hits your palate and lasts throughout the taste. This is a mild silky flavor in there, slightly reminiscent of an oatmeal stout, though it is much less apparent. The is no detectable bitterness to the beer, but it must be present to counteract the high final gravity of the beer. There is a slight honey flavor in the beer that probably came from the honey malt. A friend of mine says that specific flavor is something he does not like about this recipe, and I am tempted to agree. If I make the beer again, I will omit that specialty malt and go with more toasted bread flavor, probably from victory or a similar malt. The beer finishes with a slight prickle of carbonation, but leaves a hint of sweetness on the tongue.

This is the first true session beer that I have brewed. Session beers are those under 4.2% ABV and are very important in the British brewing tradition, where gathering at the pub for a couple of pints after work is the norm for the British public. If their common beer were stronger, people would be getting sloshed all the time, so the pub masters brewed milds and bitters that were session beers, i.e. beer with great taste that is refreshing, but not too strong. Brewing good beer like this is a challenge that I hope to undertake again soon.

A note about the photo: I write this post after spending the day at an apple festival with my family and the family of a good friend who is also a homebrewer. The leaves are beginning to turn and it feels like Fall. It was a great Fall day outside, clear and crisp, so I felt the need to take a picture of the beer outside, while rays of the setting sun showed the highlights in the beer, much like the highlights of the changing leaves.

"Double Down" Scottish 80/~ Ale

So, I am sure a lot of the other homebrewers out there have had boil-overs before. It is a common problem, especially when you first start homebrewing. At that time, you have no idea that boiling wart has the characteristic of explosively generating foam, much like boiling pasta water on steroids. However, I have been brewing for several years now; so, for the most part, I know what to look for and how to avoid the common pitfalls.

Enter important Tom personality characteristic #2 (the first is that I love homebrewing). I rarely sit still. I mean to say that I usually have a to-do list inscribed in my mind that clearly dictates all of the tasks that I must complete in a given weekend. So, it is very common for me to try to do multiple tasks at once. In this case, I was doing the following:

- Brewing the Scottish ale
- Watching my son (read, he was "helping", while my wife was at our daughter's soccer game
- Baking a batch of sourdough bread
- Mowing the lawn and doing other gardening stuff

So, add to this insane mix that my Mom calls to say hi. She has no idea I am doing all of this stuff and we had not spoken for a few weeks (Call your Mom, today!). So I pause to talk to her and to help my son do a jigsaw puzzle. Enter boil over number one. I caught it in time not to be extremely bad, but I still had to wipe off most of the pot and parts of the burner stand. I hang up with my Mom and get things cleaned up.

Things seem to be going well, so I toss in the hops and then turn to respond to a question that my son asks. BOOM. Boil over number two, this time with hops. I promptly curse, which is repeated by my son. It is just the way this brew day is going.

In the end, everything got done (the beer is fermenting away in the fridge now, the lawn is mowed, my son is still alive, the bread is fantastic, and I am still sane). I felt that the beer should be named "Double Down" for the two times that foam ran down the sides of the kettle.

The take home lesson is that you should enjoy the brew day (especially seeing how beautiful it was outside this weekend) and not try to do too much at the same time. Your beer, and your spouse/significant other/children/neighbors, will thank you for it . . .

American Pale Ale

I must admit that American Pale Ale (APA) has never been a favorite style of mine. It is probably the most commonly available style, with every brew pub in America making their own version. However, that said, it also allows a LOT of latitude when designing a recipe because there are so many different versions.

I was inspired to do an APA by two factors. First, the APA that I brewed for John's party this year was a huge hit. It was the keg that disappeared the fastest by a good hour or more. This in spite of the fact we had oatmeal stout on nitro tap (my personal favorite). The recipe is actually a modified version of the one I made for John's party, with different hops.

The second reason for the APA was a discussion at a CAMRA meeting a couple of months ago. One of the members was talking about mash hoping, a technique where you add hops directly to the mash. This is an excellent way to use old hops, as the technique does not really get extra bitterness out of the hops, but somehow results in greater hop mouthfeel. I really wanted to try this out and had 2 ounces of year old amarillo hops to use.

Brewed: 7/19/2008

Kegged: 8/7/2008

Original Gravity: 1.053

Final Gravity: 1.010

IBU (estimated, due to mash hopping): 48

Alcohol By Volume: 5.5%

Carbonation Volume: 2.7 (15 psi at 40 degrees F)

The beer pours an amber color, much like a dark honey. It has a chill haze at lower temperatures that vanishes as the beer warms. It has a nice off-white head, a little craggy due to all of the hops. It has a definite hop smell, more along the lines of an IPA than an APA, but not quite as citrus-heavy.

The beer tastes very hoppy. There is a fullness to the hop flavor that I have not made before, which I attribute to the mash hopping. I really have no idea how this works, but I like the end product. There is a bit of caramel on the back part of the tongue, but it is very subdued. The beer finishes very dry, as we can see with the 1.010 final gravity. This leaves the palate ready for more beer, but when I brew it again, I might increase the caramel malt a bit. The dryness is a bit out of balance and I would like a slight hint more residual sweetness. Overall, I am very happy with the product and will definitely try to brew this one again.

Partner Brewing

I brewed my Oktoberfest or marzen lager this past Saturday and put a post up about the brew day on our homebrew club (CAMRA) forums. One of the members of CAMRA, Billy, contacted me and stated he wanted to come over to help brew. I must say that this is my favorite part of this hobby. Homebrewing is a very social hobby and people always seem to want to help each other. Friendly chatter and helping hands make a brew day all the more enjoyable.

Billy is a relatively recent, but passionate, homebrewer. He had not seen anyone do an all-batch of beer before and he had lots of questions. It was rather fun to walk him through the process and his questions were insightful and well-thought out. We also had the opportunity to enjoy a homebrew or two and Billy seemed to like both the pale ale and chocolate-hazelnut robust porter that I have on tap.

Thanks for coming over, Billy. Sharing mutual interest in this wonderful hobby is what CAMRA and homebrewing are all about. For more information about CAMRA, see our website at: http://www.cvillebrewing.com/

Chocolate Hazelnut Robust Porter

This beer came from Jamil Zainasheff's book Brewing Classic Styles. This has become my favorite recipe book and I have had consistent success with the recipes it presents. I brewed this beer for my wife, who loves all things chocolate, because she is so tolerant of my hobby and because I used a good portion of my "marriage capital" when I purchased and built my kegerator. Thanks honey, I hope you like it.

Brewed: 6/7/2008
Kegged: 6/21/2008
Original Gravity: 1.076
Final Gravity: 1.022
Alcohol By Volume: 6.8%
Carbonation Volume: 2.2 (12 psi at 40 degrees F)

The beer features a full 8 oz can of Hersey's baking chocolate, which a friend wisely had me mix in hot wort in a sauce pan, rather than dump directly into the boil. The smell coming off of the brew pot was heavenly, even it if was 95 F outside on the deck when I made the beer. By the end of fermentation, the chocolate had settled to the bottom of the carboy, in a thick dark chocolate sludge. I was briefly tempted to try some, but then thought better of it. The porter had 0.5 oz of hazelnut extract added directly to the keg. The beer should age very well, given its large amount of dark and roasty malts and higher alcohol content.

The beer pours very dark. I mean like looking into a black hole dark. It's head is course and craggy, more like the head you would expect on an IPA, rather than a stout. The head is a dark creamy color, similar to the espresso stout I made last year, but not quite as tan. The head disappears quickly, which might be due to the high fat content in the chocolate. The porter smells of dark chocolate, with a very slight hint of hazelnut. It reminds me a bit of some of the chocolate shops we visited when in Italy, not sweet like Hersey Park's Chocolate World, but something more complex.

The first taste you get is roast. The roast character of the porter is more reminiscent of a stout. I think the robust porter naturally has this flavor, but the dark chocolate contributes to it as well. You get chocolate on the middle of the tongue, but it is more subdued than you would think after the smell. There is a bit of mocha on the back of the tongue, followed by just a hint of hazelnut. If I make the beer again, I will definitely bump the hazelnut extract up, perhaps to 0.75 oz of extract.

Overall, this is a enjoyable beer, but one that is complex enough so that you would probably not have more than a pint at a time. Cheers, honey, and once again I am glad a married a wonderful woman who enjoys beer and supports my exploration of brewing it.

Kegerator Conversion Complete

I have finished converting my kegerator so that it can use three taps. When I first bought the kegerator, I was amazed to discover that the refrigerator portion could accommodate three 5-gallon corny kegs. However, the draft tower only had one tap on it, which prohibited me from taking full advantage of the keg space. I thought of several different ideas on how to get more taps on the tower, but each idea had problems. The biggest problem is that the tower column is only 2.5" in diameter, which means that the faucet shanks would run into each other if they were anywhere near one another. Add this to the fact that if I drilled additional holes much lower on the tower, I would no longer be able to fit a pint glass under the new faucets.

In the end, I decided on adding additional space at the top of the tower. Here is how it worked:

• I saw a cool looking old champagne bucket that had wooden handles and a neat two color metal finish. I found it at a garage sale for $6.00


• I drilled a 2.5-inch diameter hole through the bottom of the bucket and its insulation so that it could slide over the draft tower pipe.


• I drilled three 1-inch diameter holes through the front of the bucket in a triangle shape, to fit the three shanks and faucet adapters.


• I mounted brackets to the bottom of the bucket and angled the brackets up through notches in the bottom bucket hole and attached them to the draft tower. They were spaced so that the bucket slid over the original draft tower hole to make the entire piece look seamless.


• The top of the brackets were mounted to the draft tower at the top, using bolts, nuts, and washers, so I did not have to drill a hole in the tower pipe. This would allow me to disassemble the bucket contraption and the original tower would still function (not that I plan on doing this).


• I put all the fittings together and poured a pint. This, actually, was after much adjustment and grumbling on my part, and at least one puddle of beer on the floor.
  

Here you can see my "frankenstein" of draft towers (yes, that is the blade of a sword on the wall . . . don't ask, it is a long story). I think it looks pretty nice and I can say I made it myself. It certainly cost less than a new three tap draft tower would have cost, which is around $300. I probably spent about $150, but that is because I bought two expensive forward-sealing taps. The actual parts, with normal taps, would have been less than $100. Cheers.

Beer Names for Bakers Party

I finally caved to John's request and named each of the beers for his summer party and family reunion. This is my least favorite thing to do, so I procrastinated writing them all down. However, I wrote a brief statement about each name, so I figured I would share them through the blog:

- Gusty Oats Oatmeal Stout - We brewed the two oatmeal stouts on an extremely windy day in March. It was cold and there were leaves and twigs flying all about. I would not be surprised if there were even oats gusting around that day . . .
- The Bends Oatmeal Stout (Nitro) - You get "the bends" when you come up from diving depth too quickly and nitrogen comes out of solution in your blood stream. This beer can do the same thing, as its wonderful flavors will make you want to deposit it directly into your blood stream via IV.
- Blazing Saddles Hoppy Red Ale - This hoppy red ale will leave you chuckling with its comic blend of smooth malts and jarring hops. We could think of no better tribute to the late Harvey Korman, who did so much to make us all laugh.
- Pissed Black Cat Stout - My neighbor's black cat has never been much of a fan of when I invade its territory on MY deck to brew MY beer. So, it demonstrated its hatred to John by taking a leak on my smoker right next to the brew pot. I can still smell that cat every time I fire the smoker up.
- Steamy Summer California Common - This beer style is more commonly known as steam beer, which is very appropriate, given the steaming sauna of a day we brewed it on. Hopefully, the day of the party will be a little less oppressive, but you can quench your thirst with this beer either way.
- Murphy's Law Dry Irish Stout - A fitting homage to the Baker clan's ancestry. This beer is aptly named because everything that could go wrong during the brewing process did. The beer's ultimate thumb in our faces was that it turned out so good.
- Short On Hops IPA - This india pale ale is anything BUT short on hops. Its name is a reference to the current worldwide hop shortage, which had me substituting three of the four hop varieties in the beer.