My snifters are in for my Winter Stout Tasting. This is my second order from Discount Mugs, they threw in an extra 40% shipment of glasses which was pretty cool. I had ordered from them this summer and the quality of some of the glasses was not what I had expected, they refunded me completely for them. In both cases the art dept did a great job, and the print quality was excellent. I intend to use them for all my future glass orders. They have the best prices, offer a quality product, and accurately predict your arrival date.

Today I bottled up some of the Oatmeal Cluster Stout I brewed in September. Notes of toffee, chocolate, coffee, bourbon and vanilla create a pleasing aroma. My mash temps were a little low, creating some lack of body, but all, in all, this is a very pleasing brew. I had struggled to carbonate it. It sat for weeks with ten to twenty pounds of pressure on it, and remained flat. I let it age a few more weeks and then today I shook the daylights out of it and turned up the pressure. It's now carbonated. I am still not sure just what the issue was. My best guess it that a coffee bean was stuck in the line, affecting the carbonation as it dispensed. I only used three beans, but it seemed to add plenty of coffee character to five gallons. On the flipside I used six to eight fresh bourbon vanilla beans and I only have a slight vanilla flavor. Vanilla flavor is greatly dependent on the other flavor aspects of the ale. My cream ale only required three beans for a week in secondary to create a huge vanilla flavor. One thing about vanilla is that it quickly fades as the days pass.

I want to make another attempt at this brew being a bit more careful with my mash temps and sparging. I might also save some out that has no bourbon, coffee, oak, or vanilla to be able to compare the two.


Ingredients:
 

19 Lbs American Two Row Malt

2.5 Lbs Munich Malt

1.00 Lb Carmel/Crystal Malt (120 L)

½ Lb Carmel/Crystal Malt (40 L)

½ Lb Chocolate Malt

1 Lb Oatmeal

½  Lb. Black Patent Malt (Debittered)

¼ Lb Roasted Barley

3 oz Cascade (2 leaf, 1 pellets)

2 oz  Willamette (Finishing)

1 Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient

1 Teaspoon Irish Moss

Cultured American Ale Yeast

Seven Vanilla Beans, Oak Chips, and Coffee beans in spirits pitched into secondary.

Makers Mark Bourbon at Kegging

On July 20th, at 10 PM I finished my first attempt at all grain brewing. It came out with a Piney arouma, good mouthful, and nice hop character. My mash temps were a little low so it lacks a little of the body I would have liked it to have. I had expected a really big IPA and was a bit disappointed when I poured the first draft. But all in all it's really pretty decent for my first shot at it. Unfortunately I lost my notes, I still have the recipe I grabbed off of Homebrew Talk, but I had played with the grain bill a bit, and can't remember what I did. Here is the recipe I started with:

Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.055
11.5 lbs Pale Malt (2row)
1 Lbs Crystal 10L
1 Lbs Munich Malt
1oz Chinook - Bittering
1oz Cascade - Finishing
1oz Centennial Dry Hopping

Lately I have had some great brews that were just exactly what the label said, Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout for one. Talk about an amazing desert ale. I have never had such a desert like ale ever before, it's just perfect. Wells Banana Bread Ale is another. It too, is an incredible ale that tastes exactly like banana bread. Brewed with real bananas, this brass to gold ale with minimal head is a great summer, or fall ale. The aroma is 100% bananas!

In other news we won the kegerator contest over at Siciliano's. Thanks to Russ, George, and Steve for all their incredible work on the kegerator, thanks to everyone for all the votes, thanks to Kati and Chris for setting up the contest and thanks to Steve Siciliano for the gift card. It was spent on ingredients for a Vanilla Bourbon Stout, I will let you know in February how it came out.

To the other contestants, drop me a line sometime and we'll share a pint on me.

My beer glasses are in for this years maltedbarley.org Homebrew and Barbecue Party July 9th. Thanks to John Heimark of Spokane Washington for producing the graphic image for the pint glasses and banner. You can now follow maltedbarley.org on twitter for updates like this one.

So my attempts at cloning my buddies summer wheat ale pretty much fell flat. While not really intending to try another summer ale, I came across some grains of paradise from the spice guy at work. He sold my some fresh vanilla beans for my vanilla cream ale that I brewed up and some grains of paradise. The only recipe I could find that used them was a lemon wheat summer ale. So here goes attempt number three at a summer ale.

2 Lbs Wheat Dry Extract
4 Lbs Pale Dry Extract
1 Lbs Pilsner Malt
1 Lbs Wheat Malt
8 oz Cara-Pils Malt
1 oz Hallertauer Bittering
1 oz Hallertauer Aroma
1 Whole Bag of Lemon Zest ( Bought a bag of lemons and zested them all and soaked it in juice)
1 Gram Grains of Paradise ( I think I should have used more)
 American Ale Yeast (Wyeast #1056)



There it is brewing up with my current summer wheat brew.

This is really a great brew. I am not a big Sam Adams fan, I don't dislike them, and in fact Jim Koch seems to be a very cool guy. But most of their brews are pretty average or below. Yeah they make crazy stuff like Utopias, but where is their great IPA, etc. Anyhow I poured this Double Bock and it was just beautiful, deep dark, and rich, like maple syrup. It's a very nice malty ale. I just brewed up a batch of Vanilla Cream Ale, patterned after my Strawberry Cream Ale, and this was the perfect - after brewing complement. It has that same great malt smell that you get when you brew. For my Vanilla Cream Ale, I am going to make my own vanilla extract and pitch in the secondary. If it is half as good as the Strawberry Cream Ale I will be pleased.

One thing I have learned from kegging, is that it takes ale a lot longer to mature in the keg than if you had bottle conditioned it. You can force carbonate from the get go, but it's going to taste immature if you don't give it time. My summer ale was questionable at best, to start with. However after a couple months in the keg, it was really very decent. It was clear, with a nice spicy aroma, and full bodied. It had a cinnamon nutmeg, allspice type flavor. I will say this however, I did two different batches, one with a cultured yeast from a Brooklyn Hopfen Weisse, and another with White Labs WLP300. The cultured yeast batch was way better. I am not too impressed with the White Labs yeast. It gave it too much of a yeasty character that took forever to fade, and never really did go completely away.

The best part of homebrewing is the sampling. Jay brought over his Stout and Lemon Wheat. His stout is perhaps the best homebrew I have ever had. It has no off flavors what so ever, and the roasted malts are perfectly balanced. I want him to covert it to all grain so we can brew it up at our brewery someday. We also sampled the Strawberry Cream Ale, and the two different versions of the Summer Ale, each fermented with different yeasts.