Monday, November 19, 2007

Beer weekend and bad beer

With a new baby, time in the brewery gets harder to find. This weekend I was excited to be able to get three things done in the brewery...
Friday night I bottled my Northwoods Ale. It turned out to be a much lighter beer than I had originally intended, but I think that the maple syrup and the wild rice will make it interesting. When I tasted it while bottling, I was happy to notice a maple syrup presence and the wild rice gave it a dry crispness. This should be interesting as it matures.
Saturday I bought the ingredients to make my next two beers: Whitefish Cranberry Wheat and La Libertad. La Libertad is a west coast ale inspired by my trip to San Francisco and in particular Anchor's Liberty Ale.
Sunday I brewed the Whitefish and transferred my Morris Park Porter. I decided against adding the coffee this time around, mostly because I've never made a porter before. And secondly this tasted awesome when I transferred it and I don't want to mess with it. And with the results of the latest batch of Burning Beard (read below) I decided I'd just leave the Porter alone this time.

Bad Beer:
For the first time in my brewing history, I had to sadly pour out a batch. The Burning Beard Belgian Ale was terrible. I don't know what went wrong, but its awful. Kristen thought it tasted like olives. Not exactly a beer flavor I'm going for. It doesn't taste like it was contaminated. I think I used way too much flaked wheat. It has a terrible dry finish that really fights with the cranberry tartness. Whatever the case, its really bad. I've poured out most of the batch so far, and the nice thing was that I had plenty of bottles for the Northwoods. Bottom line: I need to stop messing with my good recipes.

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