[BW] Beer Blog reviews my beer

I've never entered a competition. Mostly out of laziness more than anything else. I came close one time and even filled out the info and took the bottle to the home brew store, only to find out I couldn't send clear bottles. To be honest, its never something that I've ever been super concerned with because I really enjoy the beer I make and so do my friends. I have a very honest wife and friends, who will tell me if they like my beer or not. I don't consider myself a super technical brewer and definitely lean more on the artistic side of brewing than the scientific side. I brew what I think will taste good and so far have been lucky that my beers turn out well despite not always knowing all of the technical aspects of it. I have a lot of admiration for people who are that technical, its just not a strength of mine.

I've been in admiration of a blog I found early on in my blogging and that's [BW] Beer Blog, aka Bob Woodshed. This guy has some of the best beer reviews on the web and I think he just flat out knows his beer. After reading reviews of his beers for months and exchanging some comments on posts, I decided one night to email him and see if he'd be interested in reviewing a couple of my beers. He was really excited about the prospect and after a hassle with UPS two of my beers made it to him. I'm disappointed because my Morris Park Porter broke on the way, and it was a beer I really wanted him to review. Apparently when something breaks in route, they send it back and repackage it. So...for a couple weeks Rick (aka Bob Woodshed) and I have been exchanging emails trying to track down where the hell the package was.

Anyway, it finally arrived and last night I went on his site and was surprised to see the review up of the Bangy Tangy already. To say I was blown away was an understatement. I didn't expect such a positive response and was honored and humbled by it. Not that I'm not confident in my beer, but like I said before, I think he really knows his beer and didn't know how he'd react to a home brew.

You can check out the review if you want at: http://bobwoodshed.org/beer/?p=85

I'll be excited to see his response to the Northwoods (which I don't think is as good as the Bangy Tangy). I'm disappointed in the porter breaking, but I still have a couple that might make their way back to him for a review (not through UPS!). This might be something I continue to do, because its great to get another opinion on your beers. And after his response I might be entering a competition (luckily I bottled in brown bottles)!

Salud!

The Bearded Brewer

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

Bangy Tangy

Today I brewed the Bangy Tangy Belgian Ale. This beer was orgianlly named by my friend Josh Broten (who Brother Brotino is also named after). He's a big belgian beer fan and wanted me to brew a beer he would enjoy. He came up with the name and the first time I brewed this beer it was a big hit. My friend Jeff says that the name describes the beer perfectly. Because of the name, I tried to make a tangy white beer, I did this by adding cranberries and orange marmalade to the recipe. The end product was a very smooth, tangy wit that poured an orangish color. I recently redid the label and am brewing it in time for Josh's visit in February.

The recipe is:
2 lbs Pilsen malt
1 lb white wheat
1/2lb caramel 10
The above are partially mashed at 150 degrees for 30 minutes.
6 lbs Wheat Liquid Extract (added at 30 min)
.5 oz Magnum Hops (60)
.5 oz Magnum (30)
1 oz Sladek (due to the shortage of Saaz, this is a replacement) @ 5 min
8 oz chopped frozen cranberries at 30 minutes
2 T of orange marmalade (5 min)
1/2 t of paradise seeds (2 min)
Belgian Wit yeast.

We'll see how it turns out. It's cold in my basement, so I put the carboy upstairs in a cooler and wrapped it in blankets to get it up to 70 for the primary fermentation. Next time I'll write my impressions of my cranberry wheat beer (not quite 2 weeks in the bottle) and also share my thoughts on a new system I've added to reuse water from my wort chiller.
-Bearded Brewer