Love thy beer

Right back into the swing of things. I have brewed only twice since my last post, but I have high hopes for both of the brews. The first one was the prize beer for my birthday beer tasting party. Both Mel and Andrew won by having the beer that received the most votes. I made, as per their joint request, a holiday spiced beer. It will be ready by Easter so it can still be considered a holiday beer, but the style I brewed it in is more appropriate for a winter warmer. It's a belgian spiced ale that had about 15 pounds of grain in a 5 gallon batch. If I got 100% efficiency we'd be talking about a beer with about 12% alcohol. I did not but I got about 70% which will produce about 8% ABV. Still a big beer which is why I need to keep it bottled up for about 3 months before it's anywhere near ready to drink. I'll let you know Andrew and Mel

The other one, brewed today, is modeled after one of my current favorite styles. Black IPA is a robust and malty IPA with chocolaty undertones. I tried a couple new techniques on this one. First wort hopping involves putting an ounce or so of your hops into the wort as the sparge is taking place. The idea is to have a more balanced beer in the end. We shall see. I may have overdone the hops on this one, but I liked the taste of sample I pulled for my hydrometer reading. Good backbone in this one. I got about 70% efficiency again. I would like to get higher numbers, but I still got 1.056 hydrometer reading which will get me about 6% ABV. Tasty all around