time for another beer, or seven
Though I haven’t been posting, I’ve been faithfully keeping notes. I should start somewhere, and what better place than beer? Since the previously mentioned Pear Beer effort I’ve…
Not much to say about the Irish Red, I shared most of it with friends, and it was very well received. I’ll probably brew it again. Great color, a balanced taste, and just the right amount of head on it.
The Fat Tire clone was what you’d expect. As long as I have the kegerator running, I’ll always have this on tap, or at least, I’ll try to.
The Porter turned out beautifully, even if it’s the wrong time of year for it. I wasn’t wholly confident in it initially, but it’s matured very well in the keg. When tapped, the brew yields a rich chocolate mousse colored head. The flavor carries a very rich taste and has just a hint of chocolate in the nose and aftertaste. Very exciting.
The Bier de Mars is pretty disappointing. I wound up using dry extract rather than a liquid, and I think I might have skewed my measurements trying to compensate for the dry extract being stronger than the liquid. I plan on going back to review my notes then try the brew again. Considering that Bier de Mars is undoubtedly my favorite New Belgium offering I’d really like to get this one right. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to invite Scott or one of the Black Star Pub brewer guys over to have some and help me figure out where I went wrong. In the future I’ll probably try to err on the side of too much rather than too little given my taste in brews.
I’m still yet to name any of my beers. The reason for this, at least partially, is that since all of my brewing has consisted of other peoples recipes, I don’t really feel entitled to naming the brews. On that note though, I’ve recently picked up ‘The Joy of Homebrewing’ and ‘Designing Great Beers’ and hope to come up with an original¹ recipe sometime in the months ahead. Needless to say, this is something I’m very excited about.
¹ relatively speaking of course. it would be nigh impossible to do something that hasn’t been done before.