It has been long time since I have homebrewed, and even, longer since I tasted a good homebrew. Tonight, I opened a bottle of my Smoked Chili Pale Ale. It is nice to hear that carbonation sound as the cap pulled away from the bottle. It was made with Cascade hops that I picked last
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Finally, after a long hiatus, I am finally back to brewing. I just went to the combo “garden” and homebrew shop in downtown Missoula, and picked up some interesting ingredients and winged it. Fermentables 3 lbs. – Dry Light Malt Extract 0.25 lbs. - Smoked Pale Malt 1 lbs. – Northwest Pale Malt 1 lbs. -
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I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go harvest hops from a friends place. He had two varieties, Mount Hood and Willamette. Mount Hood is mild, clean aroma, and is mostly used as a finishing hop. Willamette hops have a mild, spicy, grassy, floral aroma that is perfect for British style ales. I
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Today I brewed a recipe of my own devices, a Sticky Sweet Maple Honey Porter. The intent of this was to have big porter with sweet tones of coffee, maple, and floral tones from the Fuggles hops and honey. In what follows is the recipes, images from the brew day, and the brew particulars. Fermentables
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Today, I fired up the propane burner and brewed up a new beer, the HOP to IT. It’s an experimental pale ale with flaked oats and honey. The oats should add a creamy mouth feel and the honey will lend it’s floral elements to the fermentation. The recipe particulars are below. malt and fermentables
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Today we made a leap of faith…making dandelion wine. This beverage is a traditional springtime preparation. The recipe I had called for sugar – plain, old suger – and I hate fermentation with just sugar, so I replaced it with organic honey. Is it now dandelion mead? Recipe for 2 gallons (actually came out at
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This evening I seriously needed to decompress from a series of bad news. I picked on the banjo for awhile (working on the alternating thumb roll) and I bottled the Northern Lights Juniper Rye Pale Ale. The beer was a bit darker than I had expected, and taste was heavy on the juniper. My fingers
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Tonight I brewed up a recipe that I have been mulling over for quite some time, a juniper Rye pale ale. The idea is merge a floral hoppiness of a pale ale with the unique juniper aroma and essence. The following is a summary of the boil and pitch process. Just as the northern lights
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This evening I brought over a couple of bottles of my two latest homebrew to Andy’s place for a little tasting and watch the bills on MNF (we won’t mention the game outcome, but it was brutal). Below is a couple of pics of the brews and my intentional impressions. The Sticky Sweet Maple Honey
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