Brew Haus Update....

I just realized that I have been slacking when it comes to posting. This is due to many things, for one it has been really cold here in Minnesota, the holiday season is upon us, and we have had many project going on with the house. The house project is a curse and a blessing. The curse is that I should have done the work years ago, the blessing is that I get to craft my perfect fermentation/beer storage room! The basement in my house used to be wet, not super bad, but the first spring thaw was always a bitch, usually involving hours with a shop vac and dehumidifier, but that will be no longer as I just had an interior drain tile system put into my basement! Good bye dank and dingy basement and hello to drier days ahead! SWMBO has given me carte blanche on the back room in the basement for my inhouse brewery! I am going to get some shelving, and also going to be putting in a nice epoxy floor. Look for some pictures in the upcoming months. I will also try to get some video projects off the ground after the holidays so be on the lookout for those. So there are bright days ahead for the NHB! I will try to post updates as things get completed. Here is what the back room looks like now and in a few months it should look much better! Cheers!

Amarillo American Pale Ale - Update

The amarillo american pale ale is now in the sweet spot. The beer is crystal clear and all carbonation problems have worked themselves out. Time is really the key when having carbonation issues, this batch was bulk primed and I did not get the sugar mixed in well enough, so the last few bottles were gushers and the first ones bottled took over 5 weeks to prime. Another thing to note is the taste difference between the beer that were lightly carbed and the ones that were over carbed. The over carbed beers, at least early on, tasted so much more complex and fruity, the ones that were under carbed we harsh and extremely bitter. Strange to say the least as I thought that priming with dextrose did not change the flavor of the beer. That still may be true, if you wait long enough. Two things that I have had to admit to myself are that I am impatient when wanting to drink my beer, another is that I over bittered this batch a bit. Here is the true review of the first all grain batch I produced, the Amarillo American Pale Ale:

Pour - Pours a bright orange, almost crystal clear with a nice white two finger head.

Aroma - Citrus/spicy hop aroma. No sweetness in the aroma, a nice match of the spicy chinook hops and citrus fruity notes from the amarillo and simcoe hops, smells really nice.

Taste - Well carbonated, nice mouthfeel may be a bit thin, the bitterness is aggressive and a little over powering but not bad. Next time I would just do the 1/2oz chinook FWH and not add the other 1/2 oz @ 60. This beer would be much more balanced without the extra 1/2oz. But if you are a hophead you will like the bitterness, to an untrained palate it may taste a bit harsh and overbitter.

Finish - Lingering bitterness and some spicy notes, not sure where those came from simcoe/amarillo or just the combo? I really like the aftertaste and the flavor/aroma hops, this is a solid beer, not a competition beer. On an A to F scale I would rate this a B+!

Cheers to good beer!



Biscuit Malt

In the homegrown IPA I used a pound of biscuit malt. I like malty beers and figured that a pound of biscuit and a pound of Munich 10 would add some really nice malt complexity. I did a lot of reading and the line with biscuit seems to be do not use for more that 10% of the grist. I ended up using it at 6% of the grist and I feel like that is WAY too much. I kind of knew that I was high on the biscuit but I figured that it never hurt to experiment so off I went. Now the problem here is two fold, one is that I did not get the bitterness from the homegrown hops that I wanted that would have balanced it out and two is that I just plain used too much of it. I will be bottling this beer hopefully this weekend so that I can let it sit for awhile before I start ripping into it. All of the samples that I have tasted are just different, the biscuit stands out way too much and it threw the beer out of balance in my opinion. I am curious how this will taste after it has been aged for some time. I am really interested to see how this tastes in say January/February after 3-4 months in the bottle. If you are looking for a flavor reference for biscuit malt think fat tire, you know that really nice maltyness that you get in that beer, the flavor that kind of stands out, I am not sure that it is biscuit malt in that, but that is the flavor that I have picked up in my beer, and it is dominate! I will update you and let you know how the tasting goes and we will see if this is a beer that I will never ever brew again, of if it is a beer where I can stand it and like it as a change of pace and a beer to lay down for a while. Only time will tell! Cheers!