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.

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.

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.

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