Young's Double Chocolate Stout

As promised I made a trip down to my local beverage store and picked up a Young's Double Chocolate Stout. I've seen this on tap in a lot of places but have never tried it. It wasn't what I expected either. I thought it would have been a lot sweeter with the way it looked from the label, however it was the opposite.

Appearance - Black, Creamy light tan head
Aroma - Roasted barley, chocolate
Flavor - Dry chocolate, smokey
Mouthfeel - Low carbonation, dry, med-high body
Overal - Not bad, a good beer to warm up.
Food Pairing- Chili, Stews, Meat and Potato dishes.

Spring Pale Ale / IPA Bottling

Sterilizing is probably the most crucial part of the entire bottling process and at this stage you need to make sure you are extremely cautious when sanitizing and keeping this clean. All the time and work it took to prepare, brew and ferment can all go to waste if one little mistake is made. Today my girlfriend and I went through the process of sanitizing and preparing the bottles. First i like to have clear bottles without any labels on them. To do this i soak them in warm water for about 15 minutes. The labels should come off fairly easy but some of the glue but still be on the bottle however that can just be wiped off with a towel. Next we sanitize the bottling bucket and also the strainer and spoons that we will use to remove the whole leaf hops we used for dry hopping. Also we decided to use honey for the bottle conditioning so we measured that out and also boiled it for 1 minute to make sure that the honey was also completely sterile. Lastly we sterilize all the bottles and let them dry inside and out. Once everything is dry strain out all the hops and get the beer into the bottling bucket, add the honey and mix it up thoroughly. We then start bottling by filling up each bottle with 3/4 of an inch left at the top so that the pressure in the bottle doesn't get high enough to where your beer explodes when the top is popped off. I have a few pictures of the process to hopefully give a better picture. Comments welcome, Cheers!

Drying the bottles

Removing the labels

Bottling "mis en place"

Bottling

Well I just got out of work and today is day 14 of dry hopping for the Honey Spring Ale / IPA that i brewed over three weeks ago. Bottling will begin tomorrow and I will be posting many pictures and also talking about the bottling procedure in more detail. Check in tomorrow and I quite possible might be starting a craft beer tasting of the week as well. Once a week picking a different brewer and going through a tasting analysis on the beer. Hopefully this can give some people better exposure to some really great beers. Cheers!

Chill Haze

I've had a little trouble with my Irish Red Ale in regards to chill haze and I decided to look up some information on it. Knowing that it had to do with proteins in the beer I wanted to get more information on some tactics to get rid of this effect that is common in home brews. This is a very informational site that gets into the nitty gritty of chill haze. The cause, effects and solutions to this common problem that all home brewers have dealt with.

http://byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/23-clarity/490-conquer-chill-haze

Irish Red Ale Tasting

The Irish Red Ale is ready to taste and with ever beer you make, its extremely important to taste it as a professional would. Go through each element of the beer to ensure its quality and also to see how accurate you or the brewer is on the style that they intended for. I will be going by the Beer Judge Certification Program guidelines, which are used in every beer competition in the world. Here is a link to check out the style guidelines (http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style09.php) Now on with the tasting notes.

Aroma- Caramel sweetness and toffee
Appearance- Amber, Orange to red hue, off white head with little retention
Flavor- Sweet malty flavor, dry finish, faint hop flavor. Medium malt bitterness
Mouthfeel- Medium body, medium carbonation
Overall- Easy drinking, well balanced beer.

White House Home Brewing

The White House Honey Ale was first consumed a year ago for the Super Bowl and little by little President Barrack Obama has been making beer ever since. Check out this video from CBS  http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500202_162-20107292.html

FX Matt Brewing Company

FX Matt Brewing Company is only a few short miles from my house. If any of you are in the Utica area or may even enjoy brewery tours I highly recommend this one. FX Matt Brewing Company is the second oldest family owned brewery in the United States and is at the top of the list for craft breweries. In 2009 they were listed 7th best in terms of sales. Right now they have the Saranac White IPA that I also recommend. An American wheat ale with the familiar orange and coriander but an IPA lovers dream. Great hop aroma and even better taste. For more on Saranac and the Brewery please check out the link I have put up. Cheers

Irish Red Ale

Irish Red Ale


For my first brewing attempt on my own i decided to make an Irish Red Ale. Not knowing exactly how long it would take to ferment and bottle condition i decided to do this style in hopes that it will be ready for St. Patrick's Day. Well I now know that it will be and I am extremely excited for it to be ready within the next 2 weeks.


I received all of my ingredients which are shown here. 2 Row, caramel, crystal, bohemian pilsner and 6 Row malts. Also here is 2 ounces of hallertauer pellet hops.


I then get all my equipment and ingredients together, which in  the Culinary world we call "mis en place".


Heat up the 3 gallons of water to 164 degrees so I can mash the grains at a steady 154 degrees for 1 hour.This process turns all the carbohydrates into sugars so that the yeast can turn it into alcohol. 


Next process is called sparging where we take more hot water and pour it over the grains to get as much "stuff" out of the grains as we can. This will then give us the 6 Gallons of wort that we need for the boil. 


At this stage we boil the wort and add the hops. We added 1 oz  during the entire boil which is 60 mins. I then add another .5 oz during the last 15 mins of the boil. The 60 min boil will ensure good hop bitterness and the 15min boil will institute flavor

After the boil we need to cool it down to 70 degrees as fast as possible and so with some help from my girlfriend we grabbed 5 bags of ice from the corner store and chilled it down in less that 25 mins. This will ensure that no bacteria will begin to grow. Once we cool it down then we can add the yeast to the fermentation bucket and put on the airlock.

The airlock will insure that no air is coming in however it lets the CO2 out that is being created from the yeast.

Fermentation went on for about 8 days and then i transfered it to a secondary fermentation vessel for another 6 days. Bottling began and I ended up with 35 bottles. An analysis of it will be coming soon.