Archive for category Beer
Home Brew – Jolly Christmas Manticore Ale and Skeeter Pee Plum bottled
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Home Brewing on December 22, 2011
I just spent the last two hours racking, bottling and cleaning two more of my home brews. One is the last all grain beer I will make for the year, bottled just in time for the holiday season; The Jolly Christmas Manticore Ale. This is a Christmas spiced golden ale made using Pilsner Malt, Tettnang hops and a variety of spices including cinnamon, allspice and coriander. It finished a bit lower than I was expecting, 1.007, making it 4.6% ABV. I primed with 3.6oz of dextrose and I managed to get exactly 34 pints of this ale, setting the cost at around $0.27 a bottle. I did not get a sample taste of it but it is one very clear, very golden ale. I can’t wait to try one in a couple weeks!
I also bottled the Skeeter Pee Plum, which I also primed with 2.0oz of dextrose. I got 30 pints of this cider,which has a final gravity of 0.998. I believe the ABV is around 5.5%-6.0% but it is impossible to tell because I dumped about 1/2 gallon of the wine must the left over from the Shiraz kit I am making for a friend. I took a sample taste of this concoction and can safely say it is not gross.
Once again almost every bottle I own is used. Now its time to start enjoying the holiday season. By getting liberally drunk.
Beer Review – Dead Frog’s Toasted Coconut Wit
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Photography, Travel on December 21, 2011
Name: Dead Frog’s Toasted Coconut Wit
Origin: BC, Canada
Style: Wheat Ale/Wit (Fruit Beer, 5%)
Apperance: A big fizzy head with great retention. It is a golden, crystal clear wit, with strong carbonation rising.
Taste: A sweet, floral aroma; honey and caramel are detected. Interesting flavour; lemons and herbal notes with a strong presence of spices. Cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander. A floral finish with just a subtle hint of toasted coconut rounding out the rest of this beer.
Mouth Feel: A light bodied, highly carbonated, yet not harsh wit. Refreshing.
Final Thoughts: 4/5 – A very interesting and tasty spin on the Wheat ale. Though I found the coconut to be subtle, it worked well with the sour and spiciness of the wit. The level of clarity for this wit was also quite impressive as they tend to be cloudy from the use of wheat.
Another great landscape shot by my friend
Home Brew – Red Dragon IPA taste and colour test
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Home Brewing on December 20, 2011
It may not be the reddest beer on earth, but it is a damned fine tasting IPA none the less.
At 90+ IBU this was made for hopheads.
I am very pleased with the flavour and palette of this beer, though it did not reach the colour I was attempting to produce. More of brown-red than a true red, the use of safflower had no impact on the beers appearance or flavour.
Beer Review – Howe Sounds Father John’s Christmas Ale
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Photography, Travel on December 19, 2011
Name: Howe Sounds Father John’s Christmas Ale
Origin: BC, Canada
Style: Spiced/Christmas Ale (7%)
Apperance: A dark brown and red coloured ale that pours with a medium head with decent retention. Clear and very carbonated.
Taste: The aroma is spicy, mainly cloves or cinnamon. The palette is sweet, with notes of caramel, and something that reminds me of molasses and gingerbread cookies. Cloves and cinnamon are also apparent in the flavours. There is a very light bitterness reminiscent of cocoa.
Mouth Feel: It is sharp, but not unpleasantly sharp. Medium bodied and somewhat filling, but that could be due to it coming from a bomber.
Final Thoughts: 4/5 – This is an amazing Christmas ale. Flavourful and aromatic, with a nice balance of spices and sweet malts, Howe Sound’s Father John’s Christmas ale may very well be the best Christmas ale I have ever had. Plus it backs quite the punch (contains high volumes of Christmas cheer)!
My friend's just got back from a backpacking trip around Tibet and Nepal. They gave me permission to post all the amazing photo's they took. I take no credit for any of the Tibet/Nepal photos that will be posted in the coming months!
Beer Review – Whistler Brewing Co. Whiskey Jack Ale
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Photography on December 13, 2011
Name: Whistler Brewing Co. Whiskey Jack Ale
Origin: BC Canada
Style: Brown Ale (5%)
Apperance: A gorgeous, crystal clear brown ale with an excellent medium head, fantastic retention. Very carbonated.
Taste: Aroma is very difficult to discern due to the high carbonation. Other than that all I can smell is CO2. The flavour is quite a bit more enjoyable, starting with a sweet caramel flavour, raisins also noted. Definite flavours of grain also. Finishes with a sweet, caramel aftertaste. Overall is a very clean drinking beer. Nice clean and refreshing flavour.
Mouth Feel: Sharp, carbonated and filling. Light bodied.
Final Thoughts: 3.5/5 – The over-carbonation of this beer detracts from its flavours alot. I can tell there is a flavourful brown ale, but its masked by its high volume of CO2. High points for flavour, low for mouth feel.
Home Brew – Red Dragon IPA bottled
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Home Brewing, Photography on December 11, 2011
Three weeks in the primary and its now time to bottle the final Dragon Ale. I still have plenty of the Gold Dragon Gruit and Black Dragon Stout in my basement, so this one should compliment my stockpile nicely.
I primed it 3.8 oz of Dextrose and managed to squeeze out 34 pints. The final gravity was 1.010 making this beer stand at 5.2% ABV. The hydrometer sample was fantastic tasting so I am very excited to try this in a few weeks. Unfortunately this beer did not turn out as deep red as I was hoping. Too bad I could not get my hands on some additional safflower like I wanted, but considering how tasty its turned out I think I can live with the final product.
How about a sweet red sunrise?
Home Brew – Mead on the mind
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Home Brewing on December 7, 2011
Way back when I started my journey into home brewing one of the very first things I made was a mead. I split it into two different 1 gallon batches based of HBT’s Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead and Malkores Not-so-Ancient Orange Mead. I got around 12 355ml bottles of the mead’s and I very slowly over the period of a year drank them, one per month. Where the first bottle was best described as honey flavoured rocket fuel, the last bottle was something entirely divine.
Fast forward several months I found myself (unbeknownst) making my very first Braggot built from home brew left overs. Not unlike its mead cousin, my Braggot benefited from aging greatly.
My friends brought me a bottle of mead from a Meadery just outside of town a few months ago and I found myself once again thinking about mead making. Brewing mead is way easier then brewing a beer and is in my opinion much better than any wine or cider. My two major gripes about making mead is that it takes over a year to become good and the insanely high cost of honey. Even buying honey directly from the bee farm it costs almost double that of an extract batch of beer of the same gravity.
So for Christmas I asked for honey, lots and lots of honey. At least enough to make a 5 gallon batch of strong mead. I am planning to brew a batch of traditional mead sometime during the Christmas holidays and bulk age it for several months. I will probably split it up into different varieties around bottling time, making some into metheglin’s (spiced mead), some into sparkling and others left as just plain old mead. I want to have these around for celebrating my new born sons birthdays and maybe, if I can keep my grubby alcoholic mitt’s off of them, have a bottle for him on his 18th birthday.
Historical fact: If you told a Viking that he was drinking a girly honey drink he would split your head open with an axe and use your skull as a cup. Thats how extreme they were about mead. Note: May not be historically accurate.