Reading that Bloomberg article now. This is going to depress me, isn't it?

So, I decided upon the Bellhaven stout:


It was on draught and I love their Scottish ale so, why not?
I found it incredibly drinkable, despite the 7+% ABV.

All this talk of Balast Point and Port Brewing got me to finally get one of the lesser known (to me) San Diego brews. It was good - very enjoyable caramel hop bomb, good tangy sweet sticky green to it. Not in the top tier of these palate bomb beers, but also not priced like it, so ... balance.

The article is a great read.

did you scroll through this pictograph? http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... t#r=lr-fst

Also, RE: Budweiser - AB InBev quit using whole grains of rice, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh hops and closed an entire Beechwood plant in Tennessee.

I did now. A lot of that I knew, but some I didn't. I'd heard, for example, about the Czech's legendary per-capita beer consuming prowess. Shit is literally cheaper than bottled water there, and it's good.

Lagunitas is finally available here in Nebraska, and I'm going to a tap takeover on Tuesday night to enjoy it.
This is the menu for the evening:


A Little Sumpin’ Wild- Another Big Sister of the Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale.... Lots of Malted Wheat for a Curious Malt Complexity and Fermented with Our Belgian Yeast strain leaving it Huge in Flavor and Sati
sfaction. ABV: 8.7%

IPA- Thanks for choosing to spend the next few minutes with this special homicidally hoppy ale. Savor the moment as the raging hop character engages the imperial qualities of the Malt foundation in mortal combat on the battlefield of your palate! ABV: 6.2%

Imperial Stout- Dark and thick like your favorite dessert with a Bonus. Highly roasted malted barley, and plenty of it, gives the beer uncommon richness and smoky, roasty depth… kinda like a hydraulic sandwich in a glass. ABV: 10.14%

DayTime- Sometimes you want a beer, then you realize how much crap you need to do before you call it a day. This is it. Nicely dosed with Big, Round Hop Flavors and a Toasty Malt Foundation to satisfy your every need. But it still lets you stay in the game to do what needs to be done. Yup. ABV: 4.65%

Hop Stoopid is also available in bottles.

DayTime is the best of that bunch. Sumpin' Wild is nice too and most people like Hop Stoopid even though it underwhelms me every time. Can't wait until they open up their big tasting room/production plant in Pilsen next year. Their DIPAs like Waldo and Sucks are fantastic.

It was AHA Teach Your Friend to Homebrew yesterday, so my home brew club had its annual swap meet and brewing demonstration yesterday. I picked up a 5 gallon class carboy for $10 and a bunch of 22oz or larger size bottles for free.
I'm going to be bottling my Dunkelweizen on Wednesday, so I am hoping that the election results don't keep me up too late on Tuesday Night.
The next beer on my brewing schedule is going to be a low ABV, moderately bitter English Ale brewed with Oats. I need something I can turnout in less than a month that will be ready in time for Holiday parties.

Their regular IPA is the shit and Maximus is the best bang for your DIPA available. Love that brewery.

Be on the lookout for Evil Twin's Imperial Biscotti Break which is making a quick appearance throughout it's distro network. I can best describe it as Adult Chocolate Milk. Crazy good.

Since some of you have had yours and said they were underwhelming, I went ahead and popped this one.



And I agree. It's fine, but there's not much to get excited about. Very dry finish and a strong fruity ester presence from the Brett yeast - you get pears and apples and grapes from it, as it warms - and a nice clean body and all but... not worth cellaring if space is limited, as mine is.

I am a lover of beer. Yet I've tried to steer clear of this mega thread.
Nothing against the thread or the people in it... I just don't get much out of reading a beer.

Today I clicked through it a bit and I was surprised to learn that there's been lots of homebrew discussion in this thread too.

Recently, I've been going through some batches of
"Brown Frown" - Discovering that I can't make a pale ale with organic LME. Shoulda known better but still drinkable even though it's strange.
"Aha Moment IPA" - Sort of a two-hearted clone but with less ABV so I can have a couple and still wake up on time.
"Sdoubt" - Dry Irish Stout really standard.


My supply has gotten big enough that I go to the liquor store only once a month instead of a couple nights a week.
Feels good man.

Also, recently I tried this.



Without a side-by-side comparison, I could never tell the difference between this and the original one.
The night after I tasted this, a waitress accidentally served me an Old Speckled Hen instead of what I had ordered and I knew it the second I smelled it.

Would not recommend. Also, You will never get the label off for re-use.

Holy shit, where have you been? You're popping out homebrew and holding out on us here?

I wanna talk about this LME pale ale problem. What gives? Also I'm about to run to the supply shop in a few mins.

The "Organic Light Malt Syrup" from NB is described as pale in color and a great base malt for any kind of beer.
I just swapped it out for a pale malt I had been using in a successful recipe only to find out that description is whack (IMHO)

The malt has a little too much character (and color) for a pale.
3 weeks in the bottle I tasted it and it was real funky and aggressive.
The hops (centennial & columbus) were totally clashing with it. Everything was asking for attention and nothing was worthy of it.
However, now that it's aged a few months it's become drinkable. Sometimes time heals.
Now, the problem is that no flavor is stepping forward.
If and when I go back to this malt I would try to make a purposely malt forward recipe.

I just noticed that my wine store got a few things in from Boulevard. I've never seen them out here or tried anything from them. Anything especially worth trying from them?

Recents -

Brasserie Trois Dames "l'Amoureuse Rouge" Wild Ale aged in Red Wine Barrels, Switzerland
Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck "Kasteel Rouge" Sour Cherry, Belgium

Both were good. I liked the "L'Amoureuse Rouge" which was more of a traditional barrel aged wild/sour ale more than the Kasteel Rouge which I guess was a Kriek with a lot of cherry juice added.

I'm going to be up in Paso Robles next weekend and am hoping to find sometime to hit Firestone Walker.

I like ALL Boulevards, actually, so it's hard to say. I actually order Tank 7 repeatedly at restaurants around here, and I never order anything repeatedly. That and Pretty Things stuff are just more-or-less guaranteed to hit the spot for me. I loved the Long Strange Tripel, and the Dark Truth was good too.

Hmmm... Promethium can correct me here but with an all-extract recipe, there's very little you can screw up. What you COULD have go wrong on you is maybe with the yeast. If they didn't get started well enough, if they didn't like the temps you had them working in, or if you had some bacteria competing for the sugars, then you would have what you described: SLOW fermentation and off flavors. And by the time the yeast won the battle and produced enough alcohol to shut the bacteria up, those volatile oils that make the hops so special were beginning to oxidize and dissipate.

There's a list somewhere of off flavors to watch for, specific flavors that you use to diagnose who and what was in your beers eating your sugarz. Bacteria and angry yeast produce diacetyl and other esther alcohols, all of whome have funky and distinct flavors, including:

- Butter
- Apples
- Fat

So maybe too warm in the fermenting area... like near a water heater or a furnace? Or the yeast got tossed in cold and sleepy, instead of warm and rarin' to go?

Well. In true catswilleatyou style, I was using my own recipe.
So that's a way to screw up extract brewing.
Fermenting went fine. My basement sits at a very constant 60.
Having had a couple yeast issues in the recent, I wouldn't describe any of these flavors as off...just inappropriate.
I would say it was a bad call to mix that amount of those hops with that specific malt.
I could send you one.

Do ya'll have a trade set up on here?

A few of us have mailed beers, yeah, but nothing formal or widespread.

But again, if it's all-extract, then... it's REALLY hard to wind up with a beer that's "too" anything. You only have so much flavor in the extract to work with, and it's all been mashed and cooked down for you, so then really all you have left to tweak is what kind of yeast, and what kind of hops / when you add them. This is why when I started back brewing again this year (after 12 years off) I went straight to partial-extract mini-mash. It's made a huge difference in what flavors I can get. An example, the two recipes I just created and picked up:

Porter:
6 lb's Pilsner DME
0.25 lb smoked malt (cherry wood, smells like a BBQ pit)
0.75 lb Crystal 120
0.75 lb Chocolate Malt
0.25 lb Victory Malt

So here I have a nice, predictable base of 6 pounds of clean, light body that alone would make around 4% ABV. Then on top of that I have sweet / bready Victory, smoked malt for toasty and light complexity, and Crystal 120 and Choc Malt for color and some "burnt toast" back there. British Ale yeast will leave a lightly fruity hint back there too, without being California size flavor. Should be around 5.5% and dark but transparent.


Scotch Ale
6 lb Pilsner DME
3 lb Sparkling Amber DME
1 lb Crystal 60 (that sweet chewy flavor)
1 lb Peat Smoked Malt (smells like scotch)
1 lb CaraPils (head retention and body)
0.5 lb Crystal 120 (some darker sweetness)
1 lb Honey Malt (because I love it, and again for sweeteness)
0.5 Vienna Malt (to complicate the malt body further)

Scotch ales that I like are thicker and complex, with a lot of latent sweetness balanced hops on the early side - alpha acid bittnerness at the right level to balance the sweetness - but not a lot fo lat hopping if any.


So in each case all those loose malts can be steeped in my 6 gallon steel boil pot on the stove top, in a mesh bag. And then when they're done (about 45 mins), I add the DME and boil it all ONLY as long as the hops need, sometimes even doing "hop tea" on the side where you just boil hops in water, then add it all. The point is, extract doesn't "need" to boil a long time, it just needs to sanitize. All the magic has been done already.

I didn't think much of their The Sixth Glass (quad) but I'm not a huge fan of quads anyway. Agree on Tank 7. I LOVE the Doublewide IPA but I know you aren't a big IPA guy, BG...It's not a West Coast hop bomb though, more of a nice balance between maltiness and hops. And it will knock you on your ass.

We've got six packs of the Singlewide IPA here now. Worth a try?

I split a bottle of Founders Curmudgeon's Better Half that I had been cellaring with some friends this weekend...it was incredibly complex and quite delicious but maybe a little on the sweet side. Lots of bourbon and wood and vanilla notes.

I have only made one beer from a kit, everything else has been my own recipe.
I have only made five batches of beer, but I have yet to fuck one up so bad that I didn't want to share it with other folks or drink it myself.
I haven't tried to make an authentic IPA yet, but if I do, I'm going to use the Maris Otter LME.
I don't have a basement, and use a swamp cooler in a closet for most of my fermentation, and I almost always ferment between 64-70 degrees.
I now have a glass carboy and a better bottle for secondary fermenting, so I will be making some beers that take more than two weeks during the secondary fermentation process.

Cats, what sort of water do you use?
I've started to buy cheap R/O or distilled water for all my brewing at the grocery store.
I can't really add anything to what Cap'n said other than brew what you want and don't really worry about it.

Thanks guys.

I ordered 2 Double Wides (12 oz), 2 Dark Truth (12 oz) and 1 Tank 7 (750ml). I'm not a big fan of Quads either so I'll skip that one. The had the Long Strange too but it was a 750ml and I thought I'd try these first. As far as IPAs go, it may not be my favorite style ever but my main problem is with the Hop Bombs (100+ IBUs). I like a lot of the ones like Pliny and Big Pig that are more like 70 IBUs which is what Double wide looks to be. Curious to see how I like Tank 7. I really love Logsdon's Farmhouse Ales and am interested in finding more good ones.

i'm a fan of pretty much their entire Smokestack Series lineup. i think you'd dig this one in particular, billy:


their collab with Pretty Things, and as i recall you are a fan of the English-Style?

i had their Imperial Pilsner, Reverb, recently and that one is worthy as well.

edit - their Saison-Brett was really good too, and i imagine a little age will only make it better:

They didn't have either of those estone but I'll keep my eye out for them.