Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
Thursday night, Izzy & I tried our two brews that we’ve entered into competitions, starting with our Honey Amber Ale. Now, I had the good idea of reading the BJCP rules after turning everything in… and this may be a “Specialty” category beer because of the use of honey, though it was entered as an “American Amber” but we shall see. It’s my first time. Anyway, they’d been bottled for about 10 days so still had a little time to get even better… and we tasted it… and it was pretty fantastic. A little flatter than I was expecting (again only about 10 days in bottle) but the flavor was definitely there. There was a kind of light honey sweetness on the front end, but a good solid hoppiness on the back end, which is exactly what we were going for… getting the whole tongue involved… and doubly so with the hops thanks to Izzy’s extra dashes of them. This will be an amazing addition to Steve-toberfest this weekend… and just look at the color… Honey Amber Ale...
Speaking of which, we also tried our Oktoberfest all-grain recipe… and again, a little flatter than expected… but again, some great flavors & smooth finish. You could easily drink this stuff all day. Now, it did taste a little watered down from other Maerzen styles that I’ve had in the past… and that may have been due to a poor sparge, but definitely still a decent beer & welcome addition to the celebrations. This is why you brew… to learn… and improve on the next batch. Again, very nice color…
Saturday, we got a few things for Steve-toberfest running all around the Bay Area & then we started our newest batch… the ChocoNut Stout, or Chocolate & Roasted Coconut Stout. Now that I have your interest, allow to explain it a little bit… this recipe came to us from our good buddy Super Dave of Elevation 66 Brewing a while back and he hasn’t been able to make it for a while… so he gave it to us to try out since it’s not available in his taproom. It’s essentially a good, solid stout recipe (our first such one) with the additions of some baker’s chocolate for that bitterness… and where his recipe calls for coconut extract, we’ve decided to use REAL coconut… and roast it for a bit of a smoky, sweet finish… similar to Kona Brewing’s Porter and/or our SFHG buddy Swany’s award-winning CoCo Nut Brown Ale. So after gathering all the grain bill & ingredients, we set off to brew…
Izzy also made some Portuguese Easter bread which was delicious… kinda like those Hawaiian sweetish rolls…
Easter Sunday, we went over to her aunt’s place to have a wonderful Easter dinner and enjoy their sunny deck making colorful Easter eggs… BEHOLD!!!
Anyway, that’ll do it for this entry. So much coming up the next few weeks… months… years perhaps. Due to my lack of technology at the moment, it may be a little late coming… but yeah, good times. Steve-toberfest (and my birthday in general) is Saturday, probably going to be brewing Wednesday morning, there’s a special tasting on Sunday with Southern Pacific that I’ll be attending on behalf of the Guild, maybe another meeting of leadership in the next few days, our beers are in competition, the new stout should be ready (and kegged) in about six weeks, arranging a brewday with Izzy’s aunts soon, probably going to purchase a larger pot since ours seems to be a little under 5 gallons when it was sold as a 7 gallon pot… but yeah, good times. Have a great week everybody!!!
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