Black Bear Belgian Stout aka 'Echo' Stout

Brewed up what appears to be a really sweet beer with Jody R. today.. started at 0930 hours-ish, and finished up in the evening. Midway through the brew, we got interrupted by a fairly midsize black bear that was wandering through the neighborhood.. Check the pics:

Jody, really smacking the smack-packs!

The new sparge rig. Quick disconnect, plus a 90 degree elbow to a length of hose and a custom drilled endcap thingy. It's all to secret, really.. no more details. Unless, you know, you ask nice..

Me, chillin' with some wort.. (disregard that cop car in the background..)

What that? Is that a Bear???? Ah yes, good ol' #79 back again.. this bear has been seen in the neighborhood a few times recently, and has a clearly labeled set of tags with the #79 in both ears plain as day.

Someone grab a camera and get a closeup! Who'se the idiot behind this lens???

So, as you can see, this beer went according to plan *and* we got to see a big ol' bear in the process, thus the name Black Bear Belgian Stout.. that's just how it goes around here. weird things in the brew-day lend themselves to the naming process. The beer is a Belgian inspired thing with the WYeast Ardennes Belgian yeast infusing a fairly complex Stout recipe. Roast, Black patent, Dark Candi sugar, Special 'B', Pils and two row... not too weird, but more grains than a normal Stout by a long shot. It ended up at 1.066 with compensation for temperature. Should be fabulous, as it was mighty tasty out of the hydrometer. I'll keep you posted as time goes on.

In other news.. nah, I'll save that for tomorrow. Stand by..

Kombucha Project update, chickens doing hot laps...

I believe the Kombucha Project is a failure. All at the same time, this saddens me and relieves me. It saddens me because I had hoped to stumble across something new and interesting to use in creating beer, unique beers.. but I think what I've created is completely disgusting. I just poured a 1/4 glass sample of it. Since it's been on tap in the fridge for two weeks, it's had plenty of time to carbonate. For one, it won't hold a single bubble of foam. Two, it smells like malt vinegar (yes, there's a reason for that..), but doesn't taste quite as good. See, I *like* malt vinegar.. but this is more like malt vinegar with a big fresh dose of garlic, Lawries salt, and a pinch of nasty all thrown in the mix. It is not pleasant to drink. It does not remind me of a sour beer.. it reminds me of something gone wrong in a glass of beer that you forgot, which got left behind from last new years eve's party and you just happened to stumble upon now while doing a deep cleaning. Something fuzzy grew in that glass and you don't wanna delve deeper.

It also relieves me, because the thought of the research and future brewing experiments needed to be done to pin this thing down totally made my head spin. I'm just relieved that I'm so put off by this thing right off the bat that I don't have to do those experiments! Don't get me wrong.. I still like Kombucha. Actually, I like it quite a bit.. but the Kombucha tea and the Kombucha infused beer project are two *completely* different animals. Completely.

With all that said, anyone reading this that wants a keg of gross, or a growler or two for fun, please speak up. I'm going to take it off line maybe tomorrow, and set up the Brett. Pale Ale in it's place. I'll put this keg off to the side for a while, but eventually I'm going to flush it. Tis will be beer #2 that I will consider a total failure. Not through mishandling, just through bad recipe development. Not bad in an 8 year span of home-brewing.. but man, this keg has got to go!

In chicken news, the birds have taken to doing laps around the yard the passt few days. I've let them out of the coop late morning, and they mosey down the southern edge of the property, travel up the eastern edge through the woods at the base of the hill in the back yard, come across the north edge through the thick section of woods through our neighbor pals section of scrub, and then just walk across the front lawn like they own the joint to get back up to their coop. It's funny to see them marching around the property like this, all in a row.. talking and clucking and scratching up dirt the whole way. It's a slow march and takes a couple hours, but it's still funny to watch.

Thomas Hooker Munich, anda big black bear..

I wasn't home when this happened, but the wife says she saw a big black bear out near the chicken coop yesterday. Brave woman that she is, knowing her priorities, she immediately tried to startle the bear with banging pots and pans. When that failed, she Rambo'd up, and got the keen idea to simply attack the creature with THE FAMILY TRUCKSTER before it could do any damage to the chickens or the chicken coop. What a girl! Apparently, that worked quite well, cause the bear ran off quick on seeing my angry wife behind the wheel, bearing down on it at full speed. Or something.  Good job, Sa!

In other news, this is the latest beer I've gotten my hands on thanks to Timmay, from his cohorts in the Thomas Hooker brewery, in Bloomfield, CT. The Munich Lager. they call it a German Helles style.. but I'm not so sure. Timmay did the packaging on this, or at least a bit of a restyle of the stuff. Pretty dapper! It pours a nice gold color, but doesn't keep much of a head for some reason. I get a couple of aromas on the nose.. one is a fruity, bubblegum like note and the other is the tell-tale Munich grain flavor. Quite fun! Very easy drinking... sort of like a mini-me version of their Nor'Easter.. sort of. It has that same sort of flavor. Almost as if it's spiced, but not by very much. A bit of a Vanilla taste comes through as well. It's a curious flavor.. and I like it. There's a definite bitterness here, well dampening the malt.. and if they came through a bit louder, you might be able to pick out which hops they were, but I can't seem to reach that deep right now. I do have a bit of a lingering head-cold at the moment, so maybe it's just that..

Anyway, good beer.. sad to see I've just opened my last one. Tasty! Ah well, 'tis all for now. Carry on...

Got bubbles?

No pics for this one.. but just wanted to drop a note to indicate the new Brett. Stout is carbed up and ready for consumption. I just had a small taste (more on why in a moment..) and found it good to go. I assume the Kombucha project is the same, since it was kegged the day before.

Anyway I only had a small taste of the new stout, cause I'm a little under the weather still.. been battling a head cold/ear infection for the best part of a week now, and it's put my beer stuff on the back burner. Drats! I'm not sure what's worse, a serious illness or lack of beer! ;) In an case, the Stout tastes quite good, and is definitely reminiscent of the old one that was *so* good.. except, since this one was done up with brettanomyces yeast, it's got a slightly different taste to it. And, not in a negative way do I mean this, but it has a bit of an 'iron' flavor to it. I'm not sure how to put it other than that. It's a good chocolate stout, with a serious chocolate flavor and good depth and complexity.. but a hint of iron bite to it in the end as well. Not bad, just unique to the yeast, I guess. Interesting. Stop by for a taste and let me know what you think?

Chickens are all happy to be let out the past few days, since it's warmed up so much and is nice and all outside. The feed bill has definitely gone down since I started letting them out. They hardly touch the food bucket when they're outside.. right now, you can hardly see them down the hill the're so far from the house. I worry.. a bit.. but I know they have a bit of shelter from the flying predators in the bush they're in like that.

Gallery opening yesterday afternoon. The Boss put on a good show and things seemed to go well. They definitely had the most interesting stuff to look at.. there was only one other artist in the house that had anything decent otherwise to look at. But then, *that* guy didn't have Hudson Valley Applejack at his booth, either. ;) Strange stuff, that. 80 proof, just like any other whiskey or brandy.. but smelled only of fruit and flowery stuff. Keep in mind, my send of smell in my current condition is terrible, though.. but it packed a kick like anything else labeled 80 proof. Like I said, interesting stuff... thanks Kevin!

That's it for now.. I'm hit. Gotta take a nap.. blah!

First look: "Jess's Mean 40th" aka Delta Wheat

So here's a first look of the just kegged, and I mean, like, 6 minutes ago.. 'Jess's Mean 40th" American Wheat ale, aka 'Delta Wheat'. As you might have surmised, I've started keeping track of my beers with a military phonetic alphabet designation to go along with the name.. in case I can't think of something for a name, it'll have just a phonetic designation to go along with the beer, in the order in which it was brewed this year, so Delta Wheat is my 4th beer of the year.. but this one is named after Jess V's 40th birthday, which is a mean one! Here's a shot of it, in all it's cloudy glory:

It's currently at 72 degrees, so I'm not apt to drink much.. plus, it's not carbonated, either. It quite literally came out of the primary fermenter a few minutes ago. It has an aroma of pineapple and citrus all mixed together. It's cloudy as all get out, but got down to 1.014 F.G. That makes it a 5.0% abv as of right now. It's also a Brett. 'C' beer.. so it might drop further in the keg as it waits it's turn in line to get into the fridge. I brewed this beer with Pete W., btw.. so, hopefully he's paying attention here.

Flavor is OK! Tastes like.. hmm.. tough call. I think I'm going to reserve judgement here for a bit.. it's sorta hard to pin down. Body is good, no defects I can taste.. seems a little mild on hops, considering what we put into it. I'm getting a hint of a breadiness in the thing.. but can't tell what's going on otherwise. I'm not getting anything in the way of a typical Brett flavor. Interesting. This Brett. 'C' is a really cool yeast.. it just works!

OK, get out of here. Click my google ad before you go, though!

Will's homebrew.. the brutal truth! Smoked Maple Wheat..

Nah, don't be scared kids.. just a regular beer review here. What we have today is Will Siss's first attempt at  homebrew, made in his own home this time. All done on premise in Watertownville, with no outside help other than his co-brewer auntie Michelle. It's supposedly a Smoked Maple Wheat beer.. so let's see what we've got, eh?

I'll give it a 17 SRM or so on the scale.. about a Copper to Deep Copper in color. Clarity is fantastic, there's no haze whatsoever.. newsprint would be readable through this pint glass. There's a trace of visible carbonation in the glass, with tiny bubbles seen rising through the beer, but no real head on it. I've heard smoked malts can have head retention issues, but I've brewed smoked beers myself and didn't have that issue. The cap came off this one with a resounding POP, so I know it's carb'd.. but I suspect another few days in the bottle would have led to more bubbles overall. Aromatics give a faint smokiness, but a distinct, though mild, solvent aroma appears as well. It's a mix of yeasty esters and a drop of paint thiner, but that sounds much harsher on paper than the beer gives in real life. There's no real objection here, from this reviewer. One would suspect a hot ferment, as I've experienced here in my own beers, but conversations with the brewer lead me to believe that's not the issue.. curious. On first sip, I'm actually fairly amazed! The wheat comes right through and the beer blasts through with substantial body and great flavor. No sign of that solvent-y note in the flavor itself.. err.. no, wait, I take that back. This is a real time review, and I'm picking it up just faintly now. and I mean faintly. But the overall flavor of the beer otherwise, quashes it nigh immediately. Again, I'm struck by the really good balance this beer has with flavor, bitterness and carbonation. A bit of an alcohol presence I'm tasting now, alongside what tastes almost vanilla, to me. Wondering what the abv % on this creation is.. stay tuned for an update on that info. About halfway through the glass as I type and bubbles still rising determinedly now, but still no head formation seen even though I'm tossing the glass around. So, there's some issue with foam stability here.. and in a wheat beer, that's mostly hard to do. Wonder what happened there? In any case, I'm towards the end of this beer as I type and I'm ready for another. I know reviews tend to focus on the faults a beer has a lot of the time, but this beer has quite a bit going for it. Fantastic flavor balance between it's various attributes, and a good overall balance in general. I am ready for another, but I have none. I think this would make a fabulous cold weather beer, as it's a little too sweet for a spring or sumer drinker.. but damn, well done! I will not hesitate to drink another when offered. And I *better* be offered another! ;-)

'tis all for now.. carry on!

Bread..

Firm starter..

Chopped to bits and added the flour, water and salt..

Some kid..

Slashed for baking..

Baked and ready for lunch..

Other than that, went to Delaney's Tap Room and had an Ithaca apricot Wheat.. then travelled to Prime 16 where a Brewdog Paradox was consumed, followed by a Stone Pale Ale.. a trip to an Indian restaurant was next, where water was utilized to wash down the spicy, and then finally a stop over at Bar, where a Damn Good Stout was procured for the finale.