Gringo De La Noche

It seems like it's been a very long time since I've brewed or posted anything. With a busy holiday month, I didn't have time to brew in December, but made up for it by brewing twice this weekend.

My Friday night brewing session was my annual Imperalistic Mexcian Cerveza, the Gringo. This year I decided to brew a darker version of the Gringo, more in a Negro Modelo style. I have had some Vienna malt I've been wanting to use up, so a Vienna lagerish beer would be perfect. I have had success in the past by balancing out my "imperial cerveza" with Centennial hops. For the darker version, I wanted to go with all Cascade instead and I didn't use quite as many hops as I have with the other versions. I wanted to tone down the hops until I saw how they played off the darker malts.

As with all my pseudo-lagers, I use the California 2112 "steam" yeast which gives a nice clean finish and after lagering the beer for a couple months, I can get in the ball park. That said, the Gringo has always been it's own animal, clean and smooth with a nice hoppy citrusy presence with little bitterness. I'm hoping De La Noche continues the tradition.

Here's the recipe I went with:

Mash @ 150 for 1 hour

3 lbs Organic Vienna Malt

1 lb Organic Munich Malt

10 oz Organic Carapils

6 oz Organic Carafa 2

6 lbs Organic Light LME

Hops: .40 Cascade @ 60

.60 Cascade @ 15

1 oz Cascade @ 10

1 oz Cascade @ 5

1 lb Agave nectar @ secondary. Lagered for 3 months.

Yeast: Cali 2112

Very excited to see how it turns out!

Stay tuned, I brewed the following night and will be posting about my Double IPA this week.

Salud!

Bearded Brewer