Tuesday, April 26, 2011

BEER BEER PART DEUCE

When last we spoke I was just placing the stout into the 2nd fermenter and dreaming of what it was going to taste like. Will it be a Guinness? Will it even taste like a stout? I had several thoughts about it but I tried to keep them pushed away. Then the day finally came, tasting day. They were in the bottle a little shy of 2 weeks but with the abv it probably wouldn’t really need any more than that. So I popped off the cap and poured it into a glass, it had a nice rich stout smell, light tan head and a dark almost black color. And the taste, ohhh the taste, almost a Guinness hit and a caramel after taste. I don’t mean to brag but this is a gooood stout. It makes me think about what it would have been like in the old days in Ireland wandering around after a battle against the Norse or the Scotts, cold, hungry, and beaten down in need of some serious pick me up. And you wander on into a small house, mud walls thatched roof, not too welcoming until the homeowner goes into the back room and brings out 2 flagons of a dark as night and smooth and sweet. One drink of this home brew and you’re already feeling your spirits lift and your pains dwindling away.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Good news - with my ABV on the Chimay clone only being at around 7.5%, it shouldn't need to bottle age like heavier barleywines. That means we're gonna be tasting both batches this weekend, having allowed a full 2 weeks for the bottling sugar to carb it up. NOW the tough part - what do we brew up next? A Midas Touch clone? A Russian Imperial Stout?(*that* will take some bottle aging time). Hrm.