Oh good, its been a month, I guess can post again. I never mentioned on the blog that we did a double brew a while back. I don’t think I updated the much-neglected “Beers” page either. I will get on that.
One of the beers for our double brew was an American Wheat for my sisters birthday. It got a little bit infected and while it still had some of the citrus smell and taste that you might expect from a beer of this style, it had a nice little tang that I don’t think was supposed to be there. Maybe next year.
The other beer was as much as a success as the wheat was a failure. We did an IPA and dry hopped with leaf hops instead of pellet hops for the first time. I was impressed with this beer although I guess I should have known it was going to be good. Answer me this: can my recipe be considered original if I started with a Zymurgy-published Pliny the Elder recipe, kept the malt percentages but changed a few malt types, kept the hop varieties (when available), and cut the hop schedule back to make a standard IPA? I think that is just inspiration. Anyway, my beer naming machine kept with the historical theme, calling our beer “Genghis Khan.” Anyway, it had a great hop aroma and bitterness that was just enough to taste good, not so much that it strips all moisture from the back of your throat on the way down. It has lost some of its freshness after a month in the bottle. I don’t know how the pro brewers keep ‘em fresh but I need to work on that.
Coming next: an entry in the DuClaw HERO homebrew contest. While I will say that DuClaw is not my favorite local brewery (mostly because of their super-intense naming standards), I will like them a whole lot more if they pick my beer to brew and distribute. Spoiler alert: DuClaw doesn’t feature too many beers with fresh, food-type ingredients. My main ingredient for that entry is going to be buckwheat honey. Buckwheat honey is like caramel, molasses, and clover honey mixed together. It is so pungent and rich. I must use it in a beer. As of now I am still undecided on any other ingredients but I had a possible epiphany last night on one more fresh ingredient. The beers is most likely going to be a porter and hopefully it will be super delicious. I tried adding small amounts of the honey to store-bought porters to get a sense of how it would taste ala Brewmasters but lets just say that it didn’t go well at all.