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.

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.

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.

This is the first beer I’ve ever brewed.  Only stands to reason that it should be the first beer I review.  But before I dive too far, I should explain how I intend to do these.

First, recipe/brewing and tasting posts will normally be kept separate.  But with this being the first, and the idea for the blog coming a little after the time I actually brewed this batch, we’re combining the two here.

Second, since the recipe/brewing post will come before the tasting, I’ll just order this one in the same way.  With that said, let’s get to the beer!

Recipe:

With this being my first beer, I stuck 100 percent with the kit from Northern Brewer, which was assembled to mimic the actual Honey Porter recipe cooked up at the actual White House.  There were a few differences.  For one, the good folks at the Northern Brewer store here in Milwaukee swapped out the original Nottingham dry yeast for a package of Wyeast #1056 liquid yeast (one of the handy-dandy smack-packs).  So this is the recipe and instructions provided with the kit.  For the link-averse, it looks like this:

Specialty Grains:

• 1 lb Briess Caramel 20
• 0.75 lbs Briess Munich Malt
• 0.625 lbs English Black Malt
• 0.188 lbs English Chocolate Malt

Fermentables:

• 6.3 lbs Gold malt syrup (at 60 min)
• 1 lb Honey (at 60 min)

Hops:

• 0.5 oz Nugget hops (at 45 min)
• 0.5 oz Nugget hops (at 30 min)
• 0.5 oz Hallertau hops (at 0 mins/flameout)

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

• OG: 1.058
• FG: 1.015
• IBU: 35
• SRM: 33
• ABV: 5.7%

Brewed September 30, 2012, Bottled October 21, 2012

Following the instructions I put 3.5gal water in the pot (it was probably closer to 4, but my kettle doesn’t have markings), and heated it up to 170˚.  The instructions actually called for bringing it up to a boil, and then placing the specialty grain bag in to steep until it cooled to 170˚.  However, one of the guys at the store recommended only heating it to 170˚ and letting them steep for an even 20 minutes in order to keep from extracting harsh tannins from the mash.  So I followed the advice of the guy who had done this kind of stuff a lot.

After steeping the specialty grains, I pulled the bag, and brought the mixture up to a full rolling boil.  Pulled the kettle off the burner as told, and added the fermentables, stirring it with a big brewing spoon as if the whole thing were a vinaigrette getting its oil-add.  After returning the newly-made wort to the burner, I remembered something the guy at the store mentioned.

A helpful little product called “Fermcap S.”

Specifically, I remembered I didn’t get any.  And it prevents boil-overs beautifully as I found on a later brew day.  But on this one, the wort foamed up, and would have boiled over, despite the pot only being a little over half full, had I not been able to fumble on my oven mitts and remove the kettle from the burner as I did.  Crisis (narrowly) averted.

The second attempt to boil was much calmer.  It foamed up, but came about an inch shy of the rim of the kettle, and then settled back down.  The unhopped wort smelled like dry, chocolately cookies.  VERY pleasant.

At 45 minutes, I added the first hop addition.  The Nugget hops made the wort smell more like chocolate flowers, if you can imagine that.  Almost like a chocolate cake made with an IPA.  HEY…that sounds like an idea!

At 30 minutes, the second round of Nugget hops went in.  The floral qualities returned from the new hops, but the bitterness was apparent to the nose.  The chocolate aromas also began to fade a bit.

Curiously, at 0 minutes, when the final Hallertau hops were added and the wort was pulled from the heat, the chocolate aromas returned, smelling more like the first hop addition, but with an added malty/bakery note.  That was interesting.

Everything was cooled using a cold water/ice/running water bath in the sink.  Everything cooled in about twenty minutes.  Overall, I was able to rack about 2.5 gal of wort into the bucket.  Yes…I have a bucket.  Told you it was my first round.  Topped off with cold water, but apparently only to about 4gal.  The problem with the bucket fermenter is that you can’t tell what’s wort and what’s foam.

In the end, I racked it into the bottling bucket three weeks later with 3.2oz of table sugar for priming.  Ended up with 38 complete bottles.  Much less than I originally thought I should get.

Tasting:

Appearance: (2.5/5) Dark.  Very dark.  To the point of opacity.  Maybe that’s because it’s only been conditioning for two weeks at the time of this writing, but maybe it’s because I don’t try to leave the yeast dregs entirely in the bottom of the bottle.  I like them.  So sue me.  The head is a light tan, and very thick, but dissipates within about five or ten minutes, leaving little lacing on the glass.

Aroma: (3/5) Very malt forward.  You can’t get much of the hops at all on the nose, but you do get that chocolate, bakery, cakey aroma over anything else.  There’s also a bit of fruitiness to it, perhaps cherries.  Yeah…that’s cherries.  Pleasant to the palate.

Taste: (3/5)  Again, the maltiness dominates, with a high sweetness from the honey.  Much more sweetness than the 1.012 final gravity would have me think.  But at this point, I’m not experienced enough to tell if the calculator is off, or my palate isn’t tuned to fine beer tastings yet.  But the sweetness is there, the chocolate isn’t as much.  Instead it’s malt, honey, and a little bit of that cherry.  No hop flavor, and just enough bittering to keep this brew from being a complete sugar-bomb.

Drinkability and Mouthfeel: (4/5)  Infinite.  I’m sure that doing this recipe as an all-grain (which I may, some day, given more money) would be more complex, and a little more fun, but as it is, an extract kit with specialty grains, I could drink this all day.  Especially with the Milwaukee autumn weather chilling off more and more.  It’s not as heavy as you a porter could be, either.  I think part of that was getting the carbing right.  The bubbles are just the right size and quantity to make this an overall pleasant beer.

Design: (3/5)  As with all the beers I intend to brew, I’m making a set of bottle labels out of simple address labels.  Enough space to tell me what it is, when it was made, and to have a little fun with it.  And small enough to be a perfect neck-wrap label.  You could see it in the image above on the bottle.  I like it.  I like how the design conveys the source of the recipe (the fancy-schmancy White House), but cleanly juxtaposes it against the hardy origins of English robust porter ales.  What do you think?

Final Score: (17.5/25)  Overall, this was a great first run.  Furthermore, it was a successful first attempt at brewing.  It was very satisfying, all the major pitfalls were avoided (no infected, band-aid beer!), and it made me want to get the second batch going before I had even had a chance to rack and bottle the first.

That being said, it’s an extract kit, and there’s much more that can be done with beer.  Not much more with my own limited selection of equipment, but more overall.  And if I want to score this beer in fairness with other major-craft-label offerings, I have to ding the hell out of myself.  And that’s what I’m doing.

EDIT: Updated the calculations with the new Brewer’s Friend calculator.  When I tasted everything, I thought the beer was a bit sweeter than the TastyBrew’s 1.014 FG would indicate, and that the bitterness from the hops was nowhere near 51.  I think the 35 from Brewer’s Friend may be overstating it a bit as well, but I may change my mind with a little more experience.  The OG and the SRM were both very close, and seemed to match the recipe well enough, but I also thought the alcohol content was a bit more noticeable than the pedestrian 5.3% figured by TastyBrew indicated.  One of the big strengths of the Brewer’s Friend calculator is it lets you add in what yeast you’re using, a feature lacking in TastyBrew’s configuration.  Here’s the original stats:

Vitals (according to the handy TastyBrew.com):

• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.014
• IBU: 51
• SRM: 35
• ABV: 5.3%

The post Recipe/Tasting: Northern Brewer White House Honey Porter appeared first on The Midwest Guy.