four years ago. 

made it as an experiment, in two 5-gallon batches.  The idea being, one would be served after a brief rest, the other would be aged in the 5-gallon oak barrel I received many Christmases ago!  It’s still in the barrel, in need of additional aging,

I figured I would pull a sample and see how we’re doing!

I haven’t fooled with the “non-aged” mead at all, but that’s because the fermentation got stuck at the stage of “alcoholic pancake syrup.”  It’s the exact same recipe, it just stalled out at about 1.047 (for reference for those of you who aren’t regular brewers/vintners, 1.047 is roughly where a Budweiser-type beer will start before fermentation).

Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Fermentables:

• 17 lbs Kallas Honey Farm blueberry blossom honey
• 2.5 lbs Kallas Honey Farm buckwheat honey

Yeast:

• 3 packets Lalvin 1116

Adjuncts:

• 12oz bee pollen
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 tsp yeast energizer

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.140 (measured)
• FG: 1.020 (measured)
• IBU: 0
• SRM: 5.72 (pre-aging)
• ABV: 15.75%

BrewDay: January 26, 2014

Brought a combination of honey and enough water to make 5.5 gallons to about 185˚F.  Once temp was up, added bee pollen, and mixed well.  Added yeast nutrient and energizer and mixed just prior to putting in primary fermenter.  Pitched with 3 packets of Lalvin 1116.

March 15, 2014

Checked final gravity and it was down to 1.020.  Transferred off lees to a clean carboy to figure out what to do with it next (a lot was going on with life around this time).

October 19, 2014

After transferring out a big barleywine from the barrel, I transferred this into the barrel (where it remains as of this writing).

Tasting: October 28, 2018

Appearance: (3/5) Frankly, it looks like a hazy brandy.  That’s a product of both four years in an oak barrel (the dark brown-ness of it), and the load of pollen and nutrients I haven’t clarified out of it, since it’s not quite ready for prime time.

Aroma: (3.5/5) It smells like a honey brandy almost.  A floral, sweet aroma paired with a little heat from the alcohol.  This…is a big mead.  I really had no idea how to make mead properly when I made this batch (I’ve since learned I screwed up a lot, but hey, that’s what learning’s all about!), but the aroma is, still, pleasant.

Taste: (3/5) Hot!  It’s a hot one, folks!  Granted, it clocks in at (calculated) 15.75% ABV!  But with a 1.020 final gravity (tested), it’s still sweet.  I’ve since learned the main thing I screwed up is that I should have started with less honey, fermented it dry (that is, a final gravity closer to, say, 1.005) and then “back sweetened” it, which is to say, add honey after it was done to add sweetness.  Since I put all the honey in at the start, a lot of the blueberry and buckwheat blossom flavors got fermented out.  But there’s still a good honey flavor in it, and it tastes…I don’t know…special?  It tastes like more than a typical honey wine.  The high final gravity, combined with the high alcohol content, makes it taste like a thick, sweet, honeyed brandy.  Like something to serve chilled in a snifter while wearing a velvet robe.  Kinda.  Or served in a cordial on Christmas eve.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (2/5) This is one you only need one of after a big dinner, it seems.  The mouthfeel, as I mentioned, is heavy.  It’s thick.  But pleasantly so.  But you wouldn’t want a full 5oz pour of this, I don’t think.  The heat from the alcohol pushes you back a bit.

Design: (0/0) Since I haven’t finished anything for this yet, there’s no design for it.  But I DID get a bunch of clear claret bottles for it, so I’m going to do something special with it!

Overall: (11.5/20) This is a fun experiment so far.  It still needs to age a few more months, it seems, but once it does, I’ll clarify it, bottle it, and we’ll do another test!

The post Recipe & Tasting: Wisconsin Alt Blau (After 4 Years in a Barrel) appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

it.  Three Floyds Brewing, of Munster, Indiana, may

well be the best, complete-line brewery in the United States of America.  I’ve had a lot of stuff from a lot of different places.  But from no brewery have I said “wow” at every sampling I’ve had. (Disclaimer: Dogfish Head isn’t exactly super-available here in Wisconsin, but I’ve heard the same

them)

After betting with my wife’s uncle on last year’s Hoosiers/Boilermakers basketball games (a couple darned good bets) where I put up a 12-pack of New Glarus if the Hoosiers won against a 12-pack of Three Floyds if the dreaded Boilermakers won, I came out with a lot of Three Floyds.  GO HOOSIERS!  Granted, it took almost a year for the beer to arrive, but c’est la vie.  (To be fair, I also put up a 12 on the Old Oaken Bucket game in November…bad bet).

So after taking delivery of a 12 of Pride & Joy, and a 6 each of Robert the Bruce and Alpha King, I decided these need to be…professionally dissected.  And since I just made and tasted my very own first mild, I decided to start with the Pride & Joy Mild Ale.

Appearance: (4.5/5) This is a nice-looking beer.  That deep, copper-red sitting beneath a thick, foamy, pure-white head is something to look at.  That head hangs around a while, and laces a bubbly, foamy lace down the glass as the copper stuff disappears.  Eventually it disappears.

Aroma: (4/5) Probably the weakest point of this amazing beer.  It’s…not mild.  It’s actually noticeably fruity and hoppy.  You don’t get much malt in the nose at all like you should.  But you get plenty of citrus, and a little pine.  It’s a very pleasant aroma.  It completely misses the mark on style, but I think Three Floyds kinda does that on purpose.

Taste: (5/5) Style be damned, this is good.  This simply isn’t a mild ale.  It just isn’t.  It’s a slightly-more-malty pale ale.  There’s that hoppy, citrusy, fruitiness combined with just a little sweetness from the malt.  This beer floats up your nose as it works its way down.  Though the 42 IBUs (hop bitterness) is almost double the style standard, I just can’t help but…hold on, I need another sip…

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (5/5) Hold on, I’m still drinking…  Seriously, though, the balance in this beer is unexpected.  An over-hopped mild…still balanced?  They do it.  Like I say, though, it drinks more like a pale ale than a mild.  There’s body to it, but enough effervescence to keep it light on the palate, and in the gut.  It would be easy to accidentally drink four or five of these.

Design: (3.5/5) I’ll be frank.  There’s too much design.  And that’s Three Floyds’ calling card.  As a matter of fact, “too much” is what Three Floyds does on everything.  But they always manage to make it work.  But this is a very busy design that makes it difficult to see what it is you’re getting.  The dark greens (despite the glitter/foil finish) are difficult to read against the black background, and I have no idea what is mild about a clown.  But I guess that’s just me.

Overall: (22/25) By the numbers, this is far and away the highest ranked beer I’ve done on this site.  And there’s only one beer in my fridge that I think goes even more beyond the greatness that is Pride & Joy and, guess what…it’s another Three Floyds.  I’ll get to that one before long.

Honestly, I’m going to go ahead and question the concept behind putting a bunch of hops in a style of beer that is intentionally supposed to not have a lot of hops at all.  That’s like dropping a Chevy 350 V8 in your Toyota Prius.  But then again…how fun would it be to drop a Chevy 350 V8 in a Toyota Prius?  Did I just solve my own conundrum?

The post Pro Brew: Three Floyds Pride & Joy (Mild Ale) appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

So I’ve had several of these since I bottled them about a month ago.  I just haven’t had a chance to officially sit down and “taste” it.

Several guests had one of these at our “First Ever Friendsgivingmas” party we threw a couple weeks ago, and reviews were generally favorable, though I don’t know how much of that was out of politeness, and how much of that was genuine.  Maintaining my role of “harshest self critic,” these are the thoughts that roll through my mind.

As a quick overview, I’ll just say this:  This beer disappointed me.

Not because it wasn’t good.  But because it doesn’t taste at all how I hoped it would.  That said, it still is pretty good.  Here’s the lowdown on my first self-written recipe.

Original Recipe/Brewday

Appearance: (3.5/5) A very thin, bright white head bubbles at the top of this darkish-gold brew, but then quickly fizzes away, never to be seen again.  No lacing, no residual bubbling, nothing.  This is the clearest beer I’ve made, which was expected considering this was the first time I’d tried Whirlfloc (a tablet-ized Irish moss, a fining agent meant to remove haze and other effects of excess proteins in beer).  But it’s still hazy.  And considering the amount of flaked oats and wheat in the grain bill, I’d figure this beer would have more head to it.  But…it just doesn’t.  Lots to learn as I go about this.

Aroma: (3.5/5) Crisper than I’d expected.  A hint of banana, a hint of toast, a very mild hint of cinnamon.  I wanted more cinnamon.  I wanted more toastiness.  I didn’t want any banana.  That’s a sign of botched fermentation (in this case).  There’s a little fruitiness from the little bit of hops added, but not much.  It doesn’t smell at all like Christmas cookies.  Not in the least.  But it still smells good.  So while it’s a failure from the point of view of my goals, it’s still successful (mostly) as a beer by itself.

Taste: (3.5/5) Once again, it doesn’t taste much at all like I’d hoped.  In hindsight, I should have styled this as more of a low-hopped brown ale than as a mild.  It needs more robustness.  Theres no cinnamon flavor at all.  The little bit you get in the nose is completely gone by the time it reaches your palate.  A little tiny bit of toastiness, a little tiny bit of fruitiness (probably a product of the Belgian Special B malt).  But it’s bright.  It’s a bright little beer.  And as disappointed as I am in it…it’s not bad.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (4.5/5) Here is the main highlight of this beer.  You can drink it all day.  Heck, you can two-fist these.  It’s easy on the palate, it’s not too heavy, it’s not too thin.  Despite the lack of visible effervescence, it’s not as flat as I expected.  Still needs more bubbles, but this isn’t bad at all.  Very approachable, and with a few tweaks, could make a pretty darned good, standard mild.

Design: (4/5) I’m just going to go ahead and say it.  This is one of my favorite designs I’ve come up with.  I like the fonts I found to use.  I like the color selection (especially that minty green).  I like the way all the colors play together.  I like this design.  I like it a lot.  It’s not perfect, but nothing is.  But this is awful darned close, especially since it looks even better on the bottle.  It just looks like a Merry Christmas…and that’s the point of this beer.  Well…it was supposed to be the point.  But at least it still looks like it!

Overall: (19/25) Despite my disappointments with the final execution of the concept I aimed for, this is (by the numbers) far and away the most successful beer I’ve made yet.  But the style of beer was all wrong for this concept.  More malt, more color, more bubbles were all needed to execute what I was after.  And that’s what I’ll go for next year when I make another attempt at it.  But I’m going to take what I learned from this one, and make it into more of a traditional mild.  Because, frankly, it’s still a good beer.

The post Tasting: Kekse Christmas Cookie Mild appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

guys.  I know, I’ve been TERRIBLE about updating lately.  But give me a break, it’s been the holidays, and I’m

a lot more lately (one is not related to

other, by the way).

But I promise to you, I’m going to do the official tasting of my Kekse Christmas Cookie Mild (which turned out to be more mild than cookie), the Au Lait! Cream Coffee Stout is carbing as I type this, and I still have examples of all those Pro Brews on the right to taste (one of them is quite possibly the best beer in America, another tastes like sour cream and onion chips, and not in a good way).

BUT LOOK AT THAT PICTURE!  Very unexpectedly, my in-laws in Hawaii ordered me that never-used, charred white oak barrel (5 gallon capacity) with MY LOGO ON IT!  HOW COOL IS THAT!  All because I casually mentioned wanting one on my Facebook a couple months back, jokingly saying someone should get it for me as a gift.  I never thought anyone would because they are VERY expensive!

I’m not entirely sure where they got it from, but she’s pretty.

Anyway, now I have to think of something to make to put in it.  I have a couple ideas, but I would love to hear yours…largely because you probably have more home brewing experience than I do.  So fire away!

The post Haus Notes: HOLY CHRISTMAS BARREL! appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

Well, it’s officially Christmas, which means it’s time for Christmas beer.  I could try to taste them all (and I’m not saying I won’t try), or I can have one that is a LOT of beer.  For the moment, I chose the latter option.

That’s Lakefront Brewery’s Holiday Spice Lager.  And it’s good, but it’s not perfect.  Although, part of that may have to do with my (rather recent) discovery that the iteration I found at the store was their previous recipe (from 2011).  They have apparently changed it since.

The biggest different, at least going by the information on my bottle, and the information on their new label, is the omission of nutmeg.  Hopefully they ramped down the clove as well.

But here’s how this one turned out:

Appearance: (5/5) This beer looks like Christmas.  A finger and a half of white, relatively thin head rises atop, but then slowly recedes to nothing.  No lacing down the glass to speak of, but then, with the alcohol content this beer has (Holy 11% ABV, Batman!), you wouldn’t expect otherwise.  The beer pours a beautiful, coppery-red.

Aroma: (4.5/5) Okay…this beer smells like Christmas.  With the 11% ABV, you’d think the first thing to sting your nose would be the alcohol.  Surprisingly (or not), the first thing that hits your nose is the clove.  That gets followed closely by the orange and cinnamon.  Getting a little nutmeg, but it gets easily lost behind the clove.  I may just pour one of these in a potpourri crock on Christmas morning.  No…I don’t have a potpourri crock.

Taste: (4/5) Okay, unsurprisingly, this beer tastes like Christmas.  Maybe a little too much like Christmas.  You get the sweetness from the honey, and you get the clove and cinnamon spice.  But the cinnamon…isn’t quite right.  It’s cassia.  It’s very intense.  Almost like Atomic Fireball candy.  Part of that may be the alcohol, though.  It’s a lager-style Winter Warmer, as Lakefront mentions.  But you don’t get the burn of alcohol, but you certainly do get an alcohol-ish warmth.  Overall, very tasty, but very intense.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (3/5) This is this beer’s Achilles’ Heel.  It’s so tasty, so intense, so spicy, and so warm (via the alcohol), that you can only have one at a sitting.  The mouthfeel is appropriately substantial.  About like a bock.  So it’s very smooth in that regard.  But it’s such a big beer, and a spicy beer, that it’s best as a nightcap or one to share a bottle among friends on a cold night.  I tried two in one night.  Had to really work the last half down, it was just so much.

Design: (3.5/5) As I’d mentioned in previous Pro Brew posts, I like to know what I’m drinking.  More accurately, I like to know who’s stuff I’m drinking (so I know how to find their other stuff when I like what I’m drinking).  Lakefront makes brilliant beer, but their design is terrible in this regard.  Their brewery logo blends right into the rest of the label, almost making you think you’re drinking some generic, or rookie’s “Holiday Spice Lager Beer.”  I like how they tell me what they used to make it a holiday beer in the center of the wreath, but the typography is a little thoughtless, especially how the wording bumps up against the wreath itself in the corners.  Yes, it looks Christmasy, and I’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen much, much better.

Overall: (20/25) When I had my first one of these, I didn’t think it would do as well as it did.  But Lakefront’s Holiday Spice Lager grew on me.  But it has some growing of its own to do.  As much as one would think it’s impossible, this beer is a little too much Christmas.  It looks beautiful, it smells great, it tastes great…until you get to the end of one.  Then you’re ready for something else.  Or, depending on your alcohol tolerance, you may just be ready for bed!  But then…isn’t that the point of a big beer like this?

The post Pro Brew: Lakefront Brewery Holiday Spice Lager appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

This is a recipe that came to me from a few angles.  One of which is my wife, who rather enjoys her coffee prepared “au lait” (with milk).  Combined with the fact that we both technically mispronounce it as “olé.”  As in…bullfighting.  That explains the exclamation point on the name.  No one says “olé.”  They say “OLÉ!”

Anyway, enough with that.

I know people have made sweet/milk/cream stouts before.  And I know people have made coffee stouts before.  They’re both delicious.  And I know people have combined the two before.  But I haven’t found one to try yet, and I haven’t made one yet.  And I didn’t want to wait any longer to make it.

So I took advantage of the 20% off Black Friday Sale at the local Northern Brewer shop here in Milwaukee, picked up my first glass carboy, and got to work.

Here’s the recipe:

Specialty Grains:

• 0.75 lbs English Roasted Barley
• 0.5 lbs Briess Caramel 60L
• 0.5 lbs flaked barley
• 0.5 lbs flaked oats
• 0.25 lbs Briess Organic Munich

Fermentables:

• 6 lbs Maris Otter liquid malt extract  (at 60 min)
• 1 lbs lactose (milk sugar)  (at 15 min)

Hops:

• 1 oz Centennial (9.7% AA) hops (at 60 min)

Yeast:

• 1 pkg Wyeast 1098 (British Ale)

Adjuncts:

• 14 fl oz cold-brewed coffee (made with approx. 4 oz Victor Allen’s Kona-blend coffee) (at flameout)
• 1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (at 15 min)

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.014
• IBU: 28
• SRM: 34
• ABV: 5.3%

Brewday -1

November 24, 2012

Ground up about 4 oz (should have measured, dangit) Victor Allen’s Kona blend coffee in the coffee grinder.  They roast good coffee here in Wisconsin, and this is also a really good value when you get the 2lb bag at Costco.

Tossed that into my falling-apart French press and topped off with cold water.  I didn’t want to heat anything because I didn’t want to bring out any of the acrid tannins and other flavors that can come out when you overdo coffee.  And since it was going to be going into a recently-boiled kettle of wort, I wasn’t concerned about infection from the cold water.  I did soak the press in StarSan, though.

I’m crazy, but I’m not nuts.

Let that all sit and steep in the refrigerator overnight until brewday.

Brewday

November 25, 2012

Brought the steeping water up to 174˚.  I decided, this time, to pay attention to what temperature I start the steeping process at, and what I end at.  Ultimately, over the 20-minute steeping process, the temp dropped down to 158˚.

The steeped wort smelled very chocolately, despite not using any chocolate malt.  There was a very minor coffee note from the coffee malt, but not much.  Thinking next time I’ll up that.  The little coffee aroma there is here never appears again throughout the boiling process.  But I’ll make that final decision on tasting day.

After adding the LME at the 60 minute mark, the unhopped wort smells like…the steeped wort.  But a little moreso.  No other way to really describe it.  Coffee is already almost gone.

Right after adding the hops (after bringing the wort back up to temp), the aroma is very floral, very bitter, slightly citrusy, but not much on that. Malt and chocolate have taken a back seat to the hops for the moment as I’d expected.

At the 30 minute mark (carboy cleanup time), the hop aroma is still dominant.  Hadn’t quite expected that.  But the malt aroma is returning. Most of the floral notes are gone, now just mostly bitterness and citrus.

At 15 minutes (Whirlfloc, lactose add), the hops have mostly faded, and the maltiness returns.  Back where we should be.  The lactose adds a milky, sweet aroma.  Didn’t quite expect that, but hey, that’s pleasant.

At the 0 minute mark (flamout, coffee add), the addition of the coffee brings the aroma of the wort completely into balance.  More than I would have thought.  The malt is full-on, hops are just there, coffee is just right.

What a great smell.

Got about 3.5 gallons of fully-boiled wort.  Topped off with water in the carboy, and lugged that heavy sonofagun down into the basement to bubble and burble away.

I’m really looking forward to tasting this one.

The post Recipe: Au Lait! (Cream Coffee Stout) appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

Okay, I’ve relied on pre-fab extract kits for long enough.  Okay, yeah, two batches may not seem like a lot, but when you’re as impatient as I am, and am limited by equipment to one batch at a time (at 3+ weeks per batch), it seems like a long time.  And did I mention I’m impatient?  Strange hobby for an impatient person, but I love it.

So, to the beer.  And with the Christmas season now officially “here,” I figured why not get a holiday brew ready?

I’ll start by saying I got the idea for this recipe from the king of home brewing, John Palmer.  He did a video a while back about doing an oak aged, all-grain, English Mild, and kept talking about how it was going to get a lot of nice cookie notes in the final product.  Well, me being the chubby kid that can’t pass up a good cookie to save his life, I decided to take the idea to the next level, and bring out all the cookie a beer can possibly have.

At least all the cookie a beer can have and not be super-sweet or like drinking an actual cookie.

As for the name, “Kekse” is the German word for…you guessed it…”cookie.”  And, so you’re not pondering it too hard, it’s pronounced CAKE’-seh.

So here’s the recipe:

Speciality Grains:

• 1.0 lbs Weyermann Carawheat
• 0.5 lbs Belgian Special B
• 0.5 lbs flaked oats (toasted 30 min at 300˚)
• 0.5 lbs flaked wheat (toasted 30 min at 300˚)

Fermentables:

• 6 lbs Maris Otter Liquid Malt Extract (at 60 min)

Hops:

• 1 oz East Kent Goldings (at 45 min)

Yeast:

• 1 pkg Wyeast 1388 (Belgian Strong Ale)

Adjuncts:

• 1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (at 15 min)
• 1 stick Mexican cinnamon (at 5 min)

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.049
• FG: 1.012
• IBU: 13
• SRM: 23
• ABV: 4.8%

Before I go too much further, let me explain something so the laypeople out there about cinnamon.  That stuff you’re shaking onto your toast with sugar in the morning?  That’s not cinnamon.  That stick you have steeping and making the house smell incredible in your potpourri crock?  That’s not cinnamon.  That stuff that’s ladled all over your cinnamon roll? That’s not cinnamon.

That’s cassia.

And cassia is often used in these situations for two main reasons.  1. It’s easier to grow (and thus much less expensive) and 2. It’s MUCH more intense that true cinnamon.  I didn’t want intense.  It’s a “mild” beer.  I wanted balance and delicateness.

I just wanted to make that clear.

Brewday:

November 18, 2012

I finally got myself a fry thermometer for my brewing.  I also fry a lot of things day-to-day, so it will get plenty of use.  I used that thermometer to bring the water up to 165˚ to steep the specialty grains, assuming carry-over would take the temp to the desired 170˚ (which I was a little more cautious about after the previous brewday’s adventure of letting the steeping water getting to a near-dangerous 182˚).

After steeping the specialty grains for 20 mins, I noticed the water never got quite up to that 170˚ I was after, but alas, not a big deal.  Hung around 168˚.  The steeped grain water spelled chocolatey and bready…yet unusually “clean.”  That’s the best I can describe it.  The color was a beautiful, reddish copper.  However, I noticed the larger-than-usual specialty grain bag pulled in a lot of water, so I had to top off the kettle before I got back to work.

Once I got the water back up to a boil, I broke out the Maris Otter extract.  And may I just say…it’s delicious on its own.  I’ve heard other homebrewers openly consider pouring it over pancakes before.  I can now see why.

After mixing the extract into the wort, the kettle smelled like toasty caramel, but otherwise seemingly neutral.  That “clean” aroma again.  A little bit of bread character, but not a lot.

At 45 minutes, I added in the first and only round of hops.  The East Kent Goldings, which are very mild but rather aromatic and spicy, added a spicy, floral aroma to the still toasty caramel smell in the pot.  But the floral notes actually started fading within minutes of adding the hops to the wort.

I decided to make my first venture into clear-beer brewing by adding Whirlfloc to this beer at the 15 minute mark.  For those who don’t know, Whirlfloc is a tablet-ized Irish Moss, which takes the proteins that cause hazy beer to coagulate and sink, leaving a clear brew. So when I added the half-tablet to the kettle, I noticed I was starting to get some of those cookie aromas I was after.  The hops were still present in the aroma, but still fading.

At 5 minutes, I tossed in the cinnamon stick.  Uncut, uncrushed, just raw, intact, cinnamon stick.  I wanted the cinnamon to be there, but not powerful.  The cinnamon aroma mixed beautifully with the toast and caramel and spice already in the kettle.  It seemed balanced at this (admittedly) early stage to the nose.  Exactly what I was after.

But at 0 minutes (flameout), the cinnamon intensified a bit.  More than I had hoped.  I immediately pulled the stick out of the still-hot wort.  Cinnamon is now the dominant aroma.  I hope that fades.

After chilling the wort and getting it into the fermenter, the cinnamon aroma has already calmed down.  I can see the Whirlfloc in action.  Globs of protein are gathering and swirling, waiting for their opportunity to sink.  And with the raw, flaked oats and wheat, there’s going to be plenty of protein to work out.  I’m expecting plenty of trub at the bottom of the bucket when I bottle everything.  Going to have to be careful not to drag that back up.

Assuming I can manage that, and the cinnamon stays calm, I think this is going to be a great beer.

Update: Here’s how it tasted!

The post Recipe: Kekse (Christmas Cookie Mild) – First Self Made Brew! appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

one an official tasting

a while

 I could hardly wait one week for this one to carb up.  But now it’s ready for a proper, fully-carbed tasting, and here it is.

The recipe for this one was a complete sugar bomb.  Malt, and Belgian Candi sugar, and extra corn sugar, this one was ready for Christmas it seemed.  All it needed were actual sugar plums.  (Hey…there’s an idea!)

So far, it’s been a good brew, though not as overall pleasing as the Northern Brewer White House Honey Porter.  That’s a very drinkable beer.  This one, with its higher gravity, and sharper alcohol content, is more of a one-or-two beer.  But here’s the official word…

Original Recipe/Brewday

Appearance: (3.5/5) A thick, uneven, and tannish head bubbles atop a dark, hazy, opaque body.  The haziness in this beer is what has since inspired me to get an additive called Whirlfloc for future beers.  It will clear up a lot of that, but part of the haziness is also the larger-than-expected batch of yeast sediment that was sitting at the bottom of the bottle.  The head stays around for a while, and laces itself down the glass nicely.

Aroma: (3.5/5) Bananas!  Bananas everywhere!  Holy man, that’s a lot of bananas!  It’s almost overpowering!  Add a little spice and malt, and maybe a hint of cinnamon, and you have what this beer smells like.  But…this beer is almost literally bananas.  We can thank the White Labs Saison Ale yeast for that, it seems.

Taste: (3/5) It’s good, but I was hoping for better.  You can’t escape the bananas, but at least on the palate, there’s the addition of chocolate and clove as well.  It’s pleasant, and tastes better than some of the Pro Brew Christmas beers I’ve had, but it’s a bit one-dimensional.  Super sweet, too.  That 1.018 Final Gravity is very apparent.  Boatload of sugar in, boatload of sugar out, it seems, combined with a mild but noticeable alcohol presence.  That 6.4% calculated ABV seems about right.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (3/5) With the alcohol, the malty, sweet body, and heavy banana character, this is a one-or-two-at-a-time beer.  This isn’t one you can drink all night.  But you’ll enjoy the ones you can.  The mouthfeel is heavily influenced by the high gravity nature of the beer.  It’s heavy, it’s smooth, and the head adds a slight frothy element.  Overall pleasant.

Design: (3.5/5) I may have gotten a little heavy-handed with this one, but overall, I think it’s a successful design.  It makes me feel all Christmasy just looking at it.  Though it’s not the easiest to read, but I blame that on the lousy printing.  Okay, the yellow on the blue doesn’t help much, but it’s mostly the printer.

Overall: (16.5/25) Perhaps with the correct yeast, or with a little more fine tuning, this beer could have turned out better.  That’s not to say it turned out poorly, but the overpowering banana aroma, while not unpleasant, is a bit much.  But it will keep me warm during the cold winter months, and accompany many a Hoosiers game coming up.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.  Hope you spend it enjoying friends, family, and everything else that makes you happy and grateful.

The post Tasting: Northern Brewer’s Saison de Noël appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

I’ve been saving this one for a full-on tasting.  I’ve had a couple of these already, so I know it’s going to fare very well, but now that I have the time to sit and analyze it, it’s even better.

Yes, the time for Oktoberfest and Märzen brews has, technically, come and gone.  But really, they’re meant to celebrate the harvest which also celebrates cooling temperatures.  And with climate change and all, those cooling temperatures are coming later and later, even here in Wisconsin.  So it still works, folks!

This 2009 US Beer Open champion for its style still has its magic three years after its gold-winning run.  Boasting Caramel, Munich, and Pale malts, lightly balanced by Mt. Hood and Hallertau hops, this should be good.

Appearance: (4.5/5) This is a pretty beer, folks.  A good, tall, resilient, cream-colored head sits atop a beautifully amber brew.  It’s a dense head.  And it hangs around very well.    It’s perfectly clear to look through, but darker than your usual Märzen.  Lacing is strong as the beer goes down, leaving dense blobs of bubbles ringing around the glass.

Aroma: (4.5/5) Holy malt bomb, Batman!  You can really pick up on the Caramel and Munich malts.  Very malt forward, especially for a Märzen.  Also a very forward fruitiness, but not citrusy fruitiness like you would normally get from hops.  Sprecher advertises a hop bitterness of only 15 IBUs, so hops are very mild.  This fruitiness is from the yeast.  Think, maybe, bananas with a bit of orange juice splashed over them.

Taste: (4.5/5) The only thing keeping this beer from a perfect 5 in taste is the style it’s brewed in.  A Märzen is meant to be sloshed back after a day in the field.  This one is a little too malt-forward for that.  But, unless you’re spending your days hard at work in the fields, that doesn’t matter.  It’s delicious.  You get a little bit of the banana from the nose into the mouth, but it’s very heavy on the caramel flavor.  Think a light version of Bananas Foster, with a little extra Foster.  But the hops come in at just the right time, in just the right amount, to balance this Oktoberfest out.  Beautifully crafted.  This really is.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (4/5) The heavier, very malt-forward character of this brew, combined with the caramel-heavy flavor give this beer a very dense mouthfeel.  And it’s very pleasant.  But it sits heavy, and should, technically  be a little lighter.  If you want something you can drink three or four of (or, given the fact that Sprecher’s Oktoberfest is packaged in 16oz bottles instead of the traditional 12oz, two or three), you may want to venture somewhere else.  You’re going to spoil your dinner.  However, if you chose this as your dinner, you could do much, much worse!

Design: (3/5) This is the Achilles’s Heel of this brew.  It’s not that I don’t like Sprecher’s old-German, blackletter typeface, or its heraldic shield on the label.  It’s that it’s just, overall, uninteresting.  Maybe there’s a method to the madness here, but I’m not getting it.  And since this is a Seasonal brew, it’s packaged in Sprecher’s generic, blue, 4-pack bottle caddy.  The only way to tell what beer this was without pulling it out of the package was by looking at the neck label.  Beyond that, though, I do appreciate the listing of the malts and hops used in the making of this beer.  That, to me, is better than the meaningless platitudes often placed on even craft beer bottles in the place of otherwise useful information.

But there’s a party-foul here, folks.  Yes…that’s a screw-top.  Maybe it’s because Sprecher also makes a lot of sodas (seems to me they make more soda than beer, but that’s no problem because that’s always been tasty, too), and uses the same bottles from one line to the next, but c’mon guys.  A screw top?  You know those don’t seal as well, and leads to oxidation.  And while I may be getting Sprecher extra fresh since I’m sitting only twenty miles south of their brew kettles in Glendale, Wisconsin, there has to be quality compromises by the time this beer lands in your distributor in, say, Danvers, Massachusetts.

Overall: (20.5/25) Here’s what this fire-brewed beer boils down to.  It’s delicious, it’s pretty, and it smells wonderful.  You can only drink a couple, but after that it’s time to go home anyway.  But Sprecher’s stuck-in-the-80s design approach combined with their inexplicable use of a screw-top bottle keep this Oktoberfest from the near-perfect score it truly deserves.  So if you want to judge a beer solely by how it tastes/smells/looks, get this one.  Get several of this one.  It’s only available through December.

If you’re like me, and like to gripe about things that shouldn’t matter to a beer (but do), then still get several Sprecher Oktoberfests, and then complain a little every time you see that screw top.

The post Pro Brew: Sprecher Oktoberfest appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

I know, Halloween has come and gone.  Shouldn’t we be past pumpkin beers by now?

No.  Absolutely not!  Why?  Well, when is the one time of the year when we consume more pumpkin pie (and other pumpkin sundries) than any other?  Thanksgiving!  And if you’re going to have a pumpkin beer, you may as well have a good one.  Haven’t found one, yet?  Then keep reading…

So what is Milwaukee’s Sasquash?  It’s more than just the “Pumpkin Porter” that the neck label says.  More importantly, it’s not just a regular ale that some schmo tossed a gourd and a bucket full of ginger, nutmeg, and clove in.  As a matter of fact, there’s very little spice presence in this beer.  What is there is also right on the label…sweet potato…

Appearance: (3.5/5) It’s a good, dark, opaque porter.  You can’t see through it, and I’m just fine with that.  A nice, dense, darker-tan head rises atop, about a finger’s worth, and then dissipates.  Not much of any lacing to speak of.  But a little bit of foam just hangs out on the top, even as the top level slowly dips down the glass as you drink it.

Aroma: (4/5) Not as much malty aroma as I would expect from a porter this dark and robust, but lots of caramel to the nose.  That’s not to say there’s NO malt to the nose, but it’s not number one.  No spice aroma.  No hop aroma either.  None.  And I’m fine with that.  Some pumpkin beers are extremely spice-forward.  This one, not the case.  But you do get a smell of…root.  I can’t explain it another way.  I can’t tell if that’s the pumpkin I’m smelling, or the sweet potato.  But I like it.

Taste: (5/5) Wow is this good.  The malt is relatively forward, the pumpkin hangs out in the background, but what you really get is the sweet potato.  And it’s fantastic.  As in, check to see if your grandmother lent Milwaukee Brewing Company her secret recipe for candied sweet potatoes.  There’s a lot of caramel here, almost brown-sugary.  It’s a bit heavy, but it still balances well enough.  It honest-to-goodness tastes like Thanksgiving sweet potatoes.  And not in a gimmicky way.  There may be some nutmeg in here, and if there is, it’s subtle.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (3.5/5) This beer is good, pleasant-smelling, and extra-tasty, but as mentioned, it’s a bit heavy.  Yes, porters are heavy beers, but this one kinda sits on your stomach a bit.  I could drink these all day, but I’m a fatty like that.  For most people, one or two of these and they’ll be full.  Mouthfeel, however, is very pleasant.  Very smooth.  Almost velvety.  Good stuff.

Design: (4.5/5) Maybe it’s because I know the folks who are behind the design (not just of Sasquash, but of all Milwaukee Brewing Co. products), but the design works really well.  I especially like the cute little pumpkin character they use on the box.  The label is simple and clear.  The neck label let’s you know, beyond the cutesy Sasquash name (which is cool) just what this beer is.  That’s important.  Very few microbreweries give you a name/package that clearly let you know just what it is that you’re drinking.  Some are downright non-informative about it.  But not Milwaukee.  They put everything up front, including the company’s name.  I like to know whose stuff I’m drinking.  The downside is, unless you’re looking at this on the shelf and can see the bottle, you’re back in the spot of not knowing what the beer is.  Sasquash can get away with this more than their other brews with oddball names, but it’s still not a net positive.

Final Score: (20.5/25) On the whole, Milwaukee Sasquash Pumpkin Porter is a top-notch seasonal brew.  The taste is both unique, and very pleasant, while reminding you what time of year it is.  And you can drink more than one bottle of it at a sitting.  Heck, I wouldn’t mind about half a pitcher or so on one shot.  But more than that would be a bit much.  And that’s fine.

The post Pro Brew: Milwaukee Brewing Company Sasquash (Pumpkin Porter) appeared first on The Midwest Guy.