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 Back from Vegas with scant beer tales to tell. They have Fat Tire on tap at Caesar’s Palace. Some stores had decent beers in the fridge but nothing that blew my mind. Although I didn’t, I could have walked down the strip sipping on a large Belgian bottle. So there’s that.
Coming up next is a Fruli Strawberry clone made with fresh picked local strawberries. Problem one – no body on the internet knows how to clone Fruli Strawberry. From what I gather, it is a Belgian White with strawberry juice added. I guess I’ll go from there. Maybe I’ll post the recipe for once. Since this one is one of the first beers besides our first where I have no flipping idea what I’m doing I can only hope that it turns out to be beer.
I guess I will get some blackberries and (maybe some additional yeast) see what I can fix about the California Red. If that doesn’t work, SFB will swear off Reds forever. FOUR-EEEH-VERRRRRRR. Oh yeah! The British Summer ale is probably ready to drink. Just got to throw it in the fridge for a few days. Because, Lord of British Yeasts, these British ales sure do taste funky when not properly cooled.
P.S. The number one result of a Google image search for “Lord of British Yeasts?” You guessed it, that cow. Hopefully, with the help of this post, it will remain there.
 Beer 23
Name: Sisyphus 2008 Barleywine
Brewery: Real Ale Brewing Company
Location: Blanco, TX
Brewing Since: 1996
Website: http://www.realalebrewing.com/
Sight: A rich red amber body with a persistent eggnog head
Scent: Sweet malt smells.
Texture: A bite of alcohol as it passes your lips. Otherwise smooth and full all the way down.
Taste: Good amount of sweetness without overwhelming me. Alcohol flavor and malt flavors were also balanced well.
Thoughts: Or is it “Real Ale Ale?” Either one might do. Kind of pretentious, right? Only if it tastes bad. This barleywine didn’t disappoint me. It is very drinkable: a bit fuller than a pale ale. My only question, after seeing the company name is “Are all your beers served from a cask?” Well obviously not but I think their bottles count as Real Ale. The website says the answer is no without actually saying “no.”
How to Drink: On warm Texas nights… in stuffy Texas hotel rooms. Just the beer to start my (as long as I can do it but at least two beer) Southwestern Barleywine series.
In SFB brewing news (and as seen in the pictures in the previous post), I bottled the British summer ale and brewed a California Red this past weekend. The British summer ale will be good, I’m sure of it. As sure of it as I was that the California Red would also be good… until 10 hours after pitching. I haven’t measured but I don’t think I got the level of fermentation required to even call this a beer. I’ll measure gravity the next chance I get but I don’t have high hopes. I followed almost the same procedure that produced vigorous fermentation in the British summer ale. A few things were different: I used American Ale Yeast this time and the ambient temperature during primary fermentation was about five degrees higher. Maybe I can add something to it to restart the fermentation if it truly is crappy. SFB has bad luck with all things red.
Upcoming I have a few ideas for new beers. I want to try my hand at a Belgian-style ale. I want to culture some yeast from the bottle of a some random abbey ale I have in my fridge and I want to flavor it with raisins. The other beer that is surely upcoming is a Strawberry Wheat beer. I have two separate requests for a strawberry beer and I guess that is what we will create. My shipment of fresh picked local strawberries is scheduled.
Otherwise I’m in Richardson, Texas for work and (coincidentally) American Craft Beer Week. The ACBW website only lists two chains whose websites (or names) don’t do them any favors in my book. I’ve got a few potentials and I’ll try one tonight. Later this week I’ll be in Las Vegas and looking for some craft beer. BeerAdvocate.com likes a few places and I have heard some good things about a few others. I will try to preach SFB to Nevada. I can only pray that they listen.
Its been a while since I posted any pics from a brew but here are a few I took with my phone. My favorite is the last one. Anyone else enjoy staring at the thick foam that forms at the beginning of a boil just waiting for it to crack and rupture spewing bubbles from below? Anyone?
Sometime today I should get my false bottom… After that is on to the next beer. I’m thinking red. I’m thinking hoppy. Call it an American Amber or maybe a California Red. I’ll work on the recipe tonight.
In other news we should be bottling both the ESB (Extra Shitty Bitter) and the British Summer Ale in the next few days. I am excited to drink (in a few weeks) the first two batches of beer we made all-grain. I expect the ESB to be, well, shitty, because of various reasons. There aren’t too many reasons for it to be good, actually. I expect the British Summer Ale to be as good as any of our extract based beers.
Haven’t really gotten anywhere with the rest of my 50 beers 50 states. I think I need to take a trip to State Line Liquors to get a few more.
And by Thursday I mean Tuesday…
If you want to catch up, check out the posts tagged with “NHC.” This being our first year brewing, and us only having one beer in 12 ounce bottles, we only entered one beer in the contest, our Dark American Wheat Ale. We scored a 35 of 50! According to the key on the cover sheet of the packet I received from the beer judges.
Below is a recap of how we did followed by some choice quotes from the score sheets. I am surprised how close the scores from the different judges are to each other but I guess, if two judges are doing their jobs well then there should be little difference in how they perceive the beers. I think this is a success for our first beer contest attempt.
Judge 1:
- Aroma – 9/12 – “Very complex aroma. Dark Chocolate and fruity.”
- Appearance – 3 /3 – “Think, very dark black with brown head.”
- Flavor – 14/20 – “Intense chocolate & fruit – similar to aroma, including grapefruit, tangerine, apricot.”
- Mouthfeel – 4/5 – “Full bodied, think and creamy with some alcoholic warmth.”
- Overall Impression – 6/10 – “A Very interesting and complex beer. It seems that chocolate & fruit were added… Seeing like a pretty high ABV beer and would want to be careful drinking many of these.”
Judge 2:
- Aroma – 8/12 – “Chocolate malts with an interesting mild fruity aroma.”
- Appearance – 3/3 – “Beer pours with a large dark brown head.”
- Flavor – 13/20 – “Rich chocolate malt flavor, noticeable wheat, citrusy resembling oranges.”
- Mouthfeel – 3/5 – “Medium body, medium-high carbonation.”
- Overall Impression – 7/10 – “Reminds me of a chocolate orange. A very interesting combination of flavors. The body is a little bigger than one would expect with a wheat beer.”
Coming up is the bottling of the British Summer Ale and just in time because it’s getting hot. And its getting hot too. I placed the order for a lovely false bottom for my converted keg mash / lauter tun. Lots of little holes. Hopefully that gets to me soon. Once it does I think the next beer will be preceded by a trip to the H-Mart. I need some exotic flavors in my beer gosh-diddly-dang it!
Our score from the NHC 2010 came in last week. I like the personal touch of giving the home brewer the actual score cards with hand written notes. But more on that Thursday. Spoiler: we did OK.
Just saw a tweet on the old Twitter-net (http://www.dogfish.com/dogfishdash) about the 2010 dogfish dash! I need this. Best costume prizes, beer AND benevolence… I may go as a whatever you call a guy with his shirt and pants made out of empty bags of malt… Mr. Malt I guess. I am MaltMan! Maybe I am The MaltBagian! Mr Malty Bags! Malt J MaltBagian! Mr Bilbo Baggins! One of those, for sure.
Tuesday Morning Quarterback hasn’t been in the morning for a while, but I suppose you can’t tell that unless 1) I tell you so or 2) you check the site each Tuesday at 12:01pm. At least I’m ready to go with pictures for Wordless Wednesday tomorrow. Oh, and I just found out that ESPN totally ripped off my use of “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” for a title of a recap column written on Tuesdays. Jerk-faces!
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Back from Vegas with scant beer tales to tell. They have Fat Tire on tap at Caesar’s Palace. Some stores had decent beers in the fridge but nothing that blew my mind. Although I didn’t, I could have walked down the strip sipping on a large Belgian bottle. So there’s that.
