Bangy Tangy Weekend

This weekend one of my best friends, Josh Broten came into town. Broten and I grew up together in Iowa and he now lives in Chicago. He's a big fan of Belgian beers and has introduced me to a lot of great ones. Last year I told him I was going to make a Belgian for him and he came up with the name Bangy Tangy. So I tried to make a beer that was tangy, but sweet with some strength to it. I had read in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing that orange marmalade was better to use in white beers than the dried orange peels I had been using. So I tried that and also added some Wisconsin cranberries I had in my freezer. The end result was a big hit amongst my friends. If your interested, I posted the recipe in a previous post. With Josh coming into town, I brewed it again. I'll have to say, I think it turned out great again and it was popular with some new drinkers of it.


As you can see, I need to better my photography skills to match some of the great pics of beer on some other blogs. But it pours a golden-orange color with a lacy white head. It has a sweet aroma and right away its fairly tangy with some orange in the aftertaste. Its fairly smooth with some crispness at the end. Its very easy drinking, and at 6.3% abv it definitely bangs!

I'm planning on making a couple other belgians inspired by some beers he's introduced me to, such as Triple Karmeliet and Delirium. I'm going to start adding the Brotino Belgian logo to those beers.

I'm trying to be patient with my lager, but really tempted to keep tasting it, I have no idea how it will turn out. I'm planning on brewing The Gringo, a hoppy Mexican Lager. More on that another time. I also re-wrote the recipe to another of my "house" beers, El Muerto. Orginally based off Rogue's Dead Guy, its morphed into kind of an amber ale. I'm still messing with the recipe, but I'm switching the recipe to organic. Also,I bottled my Libertad tonight and think its going to be good.
However, after 1 week in the bottle, my Frozen Beard tastes like cough syrup! I'm hoping that things just need to mellow out...or my experiment with spruce extract proved to be a bad idea. At least its only 3 gallons. That's about it for now.
Great to see the Patriots lose!!
Salud!
The Bearded Brewer