Sunday, September 14, 2008

Where's the Beergeek?

Welp, I been here. Not too much brewing going on at the house since May-ish. Did a bunch of brewing while still putting hours in at the store. Leffe-style Belgian Blonde, Export style lager, 10 gallons of Pale Bock, a Karmeliet-style Golden Strong (Kriple), Orval-style farmhouse beer (still on the Brett), a Duvel-ish Golden Strong, a Strong Saison and 5 gallons of mead using that Saison yeast (I felt bad about tossing all that yeast out). The Blonde oxidized, likely due to oxygen contact through the ancient rubber musting cap I was using. The Kriple was real nice, took it to a party at Colin's and we killed the tank. One day at the store a guy comes in with his kid, tries to gather grains for some brewing, I see he's having trouble with both the shopping and this human tornado little guy, I take his list offering to pull the grains for him, get all the way through it, find out that his list was two batches of beer and I've run all the grain together. Shit. Filled his order correctly and took the grain grab bag home for my Karmeliet-style Strong Beer. Triple Karmeliet is a six grain beer; malted and unmalted barley, wheat and oats. The Kriple replaces malted and unmalted rye for the oats. Used the Wyeast Rochefort strain. The finished beer had a nice earthy, lightly spicy yeast flavor complimented by juicy lip smacking, spicy, crisp rye. Easy drinking at 8%. I brewed the Pale Bock, rather I slayed 10 gallons of Pale Bock wort. Spot fawking on! Get it all put away tight and tidy in the old brewing fridge dialed in for a nice and easy 50 degrees. That was a Friday. Shuffle down to the home brewery on Sunday morning to see how we're doing. Ha, ha! THE REFER IS DEAD! And we are blowing CO2 in full on PFFFT mode at 70 degrees. Arg! Anyone for Steam Bock? Finished the beer anyway. The first 5 gals. out of the tank is very Malt Liquorish. Strength is apparent, some sweet perfumey alcohol, a lot of rough higher alcohol and licorish/smokey phenol. I think I'll sour the second 5 and keep on hand for blending.