Rubbish, With Occasional Music

Sometimes the internet makes me very happy:

Created by aegix.
Here’s the original.

It’s unfortunate that I still haven’t managed to pick this one up.

via: Joystiq

So, after hearing back from Scott, boiling the pureed pears may not have been the brilliant stratagem I had envisioned. Apparently, when you boil fruit you activate a little thing called Pectin, which would be great if you were making jellies, but perhaps not so much for making beer. I transferred it¹ to the secondary fermenter for dry hopping last Sunday evening and took the opportunity to taste it. It tasted fine, with a soothing pear aftertaste, so I’m still optimistic. Hazey, carrot-juice looking beer be damned.

However, on the other earlier brew front:

Success!

¹ Possible names: The Devil went up To Oregon, PearBear, Parrotjuice

For my sophomore homebrew effort, I had originally planned on trying a 1554 clone recipe I got from a fellow homebrewing flickrite, flickeree, flickerer. However, once I got to Austin Homebrew Supply I started discussing beers and recipes with Billy and inevitably the conversation lead to the Golden Monkey.

Unfortunately, they don’t have a Golden Monkey clone available, nor were they aware of one, but one of the AHS guys recommended their Devil’s Brew Recipe. At checkout, another AHS guy Scott mentioned that a friend of his recently used the recipe and added some pear juice, which resulted in a brew he was extremely happy with. Simple enough, so I jotted down a note to add a pint of pear juice to the mash.

Simple enough indeed! I couldn’t find 100% pear juice anywhere. Even in the grocer’s hippy section. Never mind that I only searched one grocer. Being very set on Pear beer at this point, I opted to take matters into my own hands. I ended up with about 2.5 lbs of pears, which I skinned, quartered and then pureed in a food processor. I boiled 2 cups of the resulting pear sauce in 2 cups of water for 10 minutes, which was then shortly added into the mash along with the flavor hops. The resulting wort had a subtle enough pear scent, but now that it’s been fermenting for almost a week in my closet, the delicious aroma of pears is nearly overwhelming.

I’m still excited about this beer, but not nearly as excited as I am about the prospect of all my clothes smelling like pears.