It's not crap

The wife and kids are down in sunny Florida while our windows are being replaced. That leaves me to show up for work on time and sort out other odds and ends back in New York. What it also means is that I get to spend a bit of time with experimental beer drinking. To that end, I've picked up a six of Belhaven Scottish Ale. My dalliance with the Sam Adams Wee Heavy has made me wonder whether or not there's anything to Scottish brewing. They seem a bit of an also-ran when one thinks of the great brewing cultures. Easily overshadowed by the English and their own fine whiskys (or whiskeys. I forget what's what) Scottish beer is something with which I have to confess, I have absolutely no familiarity.

Unfortunately, I think the Belhaven will do little to change things for me. It pours a nice color; looks quite like Speckled Hen. Not much on the nose. Taste is strong on the malt, none of the sissy English hops. Not loads of body. I get done with about half my glass and an unsettling question hits me. "How is this different from malt liquor?" I've had more experience with the fine product from Colt 45 than any right-thinking person ought to and I know an easy-drinking, let's-get-assholed beer when I taste one. There's just a slight bit of skunk and that's when it strikes me that this comes in a clear bottle. Well, there you have it (possibly). Is this the Corona of Scotland? Will it taste better if I stuff a deep-fried Mars bar in the bottle? We'll how the next one goes over tomorrow night, but for now I think I'll continue the experiments.

I'll need to do a bit more research into the Scottish brewing tradition and sort precisely why it ought to be viewed in a different light than something pitched by Billy Dee Williams. Nothing at all wrong with Billy Dee Williams, mind. He's not Scottish though, is he?

Some pun with the word porter

Took a hydrometer reading on my porter. I bought a new hydrometer last week as I was beginning to suspect that the one I picked up in Germany had a funny scale. I can now confirm this. My new 'murrikan hydrometer tells my beer is at 1.014. The kraut-thingy says about 1.040. There's clearly some Euro-confusion going on and one of these days I'll sort out just what it is. Until then, I'm happy with the knowledge that I might have a notion as to when my beer is done fermenting and can hazard a guess as to how much booze is in it. Had a taste of the sample. Pretty tasty. I think I'm going to bottle next Saturday, which will cause the four-pack samplers that I'm taking to some friends in Philadelphia to become proper six-pack samplers.

Meanwhile, I'm having a Sam Adams Wee Heavy. I really shouldn't as I've got a bit of a cold, but what the hell. I'll be going to bed soon and this will send me on my way nicely. I picked up a four-pack of this and the imperial stout. I'm happy with the variety that Sam seems to put out, but at the same time, it'd be nice if they had a nice stable of four or five that I could reliably pick up now and again. Brooklyn Brewery is great in that they have a steady roster, but still break out the one-offs. Dogfish Head could also follow this advice. Special is nice, but what's also nice is being able to buy something a second time.

Back to the beer. Rather nice. I had two of these last Friday while racking the porter to secondary (and painting my front door and watching Star Trek). I was surprised that it didn't get on top of me as it's a fairly big beer. ABV is 10% which would even make a Belgian sit up and take notice. It's a very thick, syrupy drink and I mean that in a good way. There are nice pockets of caramel and molasses lurking in this dark, peaty thing. It heads in the direction of being the ale equivalent of some instances of Starkbier. Nice. Certainly worth having again; it would be lovely at Christmas. Let's just hope I can still buy it in five months time.

It just occurred to me that I'm drinking a Wee Heavy and I heard the Phish song "Heavy Things" on the radio this morning. Cool, baby.

Johnny's in the basement...

... mixin' up the medicine. I am in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.

Wait. That's not quite right. I grabbed the porter from the basement and am now letting bleach do its magic before I rack the porter to secondary. I'm pleased with how it looks so far. I cooked it up last Saturday and although it took a while to get going, it seemed to ferment rather well. To all outward appearances, it went smoother than my first two batches. I cooled it down in a hurry, actually tried to take it off the trub, seemed to have gotten loads of oxygen by filling the carboy and I aerated with the fish tank de-vice. So all that's ok. I took a reading with my bizarre German hydrometer and got an OG of 1.075. I know that's dead wrong and I look forward to learning what sort of odd scale that thing is set to. I'll take a reading tonight and at least I'll know how it's doing in a relative sense.

I experimented with a layered hop addition this time. Porter isn't something known for its hop, so that was a bit of a fool's errand, but I love to try new things and I hate to wait. And a porter with complex and assertive hop is hardly going to annoy anyone, so there you are.

Meanwhile, I poured a glass of my hef side by side with a glass of Schneider (picture to follow later). I have to admit, I was pleased with the color that I got. Granted, color ought to be something that's very hard to F up, but it was a surprise given my initial reaction. When I first poured it, it seemed far too dark. A comparison with the cover of my book about German wheat beer seemed to confirm this, but there's no arguing that the Schneider looked very similar. That is to say, the color was similar. The head looked loads lovelier on the Schneider. As for taste, I didn't fare too bad here, either. There's no doubt that the Schneider was better- mine is still a banana bomb and somehow simultaneously too thin and too heavy. Still, my hef held its own. It wasn't nearly the disaster that I had been expecting and that's a very good thing.

Tomorrow night: tasting the ESB/strong ale/whatever. Bought a bottle of Fuller 1845 for comparison. Had an ESB, but I drank it last night. Like I said earlier, I hate to wait.

All Bottled Up

I bottled what I'm going to call the ESB on Saturday afternoon. Owing to a bit of imprecision over how much equals five gallons in the new glass carboy, I only had about four gallons and change of liquid which translated to 40 bottles. Actually, there was a bit more in the bottling bucket, but I had only sterilized 40 bottles, so that was all that went in. What to do with about a glass and a half of fermented, yet uncarbonated beer? Why, drink it, of course. I remain rather pleased and optimistic. Can't recall the color precisely off hand, but I do know that I tasted a bit of blackberry and raisin. This is similar to what I get from Fuller's bottled version of ESB, so I think I'm safe in dubbing it such.

Meanwhile, I'm having a glass of the Hefeweizen. It's been in the bottle long enough that it ought to have conditioned properly and I was quite pleased to see it pour with a nice full, rich head. It still tastes way too thick and underfermented, but it's good enough that it can be called a noble failure at worst.

Going to cook up some porter this weekend. In my head, I keep thinking of that as one of my favorite styles and yet I rarely drink it. I'm going to take one liberty with the instructions (still brewing from a kit). They have me putting the Cluster hops in for a full 60 minutes and then adding some Cascade at the end of the boil. I'm going to stagger the boiling hops in 15 minute increments. I'm hoping this gives the hop a bit more dimension. I'm also going to try that the next time I make Weissbier. That's one of the cool things about making beer: there's always room for improvement and always plenty of incentive. I'm not that big of a weissbier fan and yet, now that I've made some, I'd sort of like to make it as good as I can. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't go combing the world looking for the best weissbier I could find, but if I can make something lovely in my kitchen; well, that's worth the effort, isn't it?

Weiss Guy

Finally tasted the Hefeweizen tonight. The Westchester homebrewers are meeting tomorrow and I thought I'd give it a sip to see whether it could be shared with other, um, amateurs. It would seem that it is. Color is a fair bit darker than I would expect for a light Hef. It heads quite a ways into Dunkel territory. Can't blame me for that. I'll just have to see what other wheat extracts are out there. Having said (or typed) that, the kit had nothing but wheat extract (or so they say). Fairly sure that Bavarian Hefeweizen has a decent amount of light barley malt. That could be confirmed with a quick glance at one of several books on my shelf.

Anyhoo. Color is a bit dark, but still rather pretty. Not nearly enough foam, but I had expected that. The fermentation hadn't gone all that well, so I was prepared for an anemic head. Still, I've brewed worse. I got about a quarter inch of suds, which means it did better than a bitters. Quite a lot of bubbles in the glass, which was a nice surprise. Taste was not that bad at all. Something a bit off in the aftertaste and the nose, but nothing that makes it seem poisonous or fetid or anything dreadful. Really just a tiny bit of something-or-other that shouldn't ought to be there, but doesn't upset things all that much.

I poured it alongside Magic Hat's "Circus Boy" and Smuttynose's Summer Weizen Ale. Truth be told, I'd likely be just as happy with a glass of mine as either of those. OK, that's stacking the deck a bit; the Smuttynose is fairly dreadful. Still, it's good to know that the homebrew for which I had rather low expectations could hold its own against something store bought. I'll grab some Schneider for a proper comparison.

No place like foam

I have 10 gallons of partially fermented beer in my closet. In about an hour or so, I'm going to do some siphoning. The hefeweizen will go into the bottling bucket. Then the secondary fermentor will get cleaned and santized so that the ESB can go in. Then the hefeweizen goes into the carboy. See, the hefeweizen didn't ferment properly. There are at least two reasons for this: 1) I didn't chill fast enough and 2) poor (very poor) aeration. The first thing is actually ridiculously easy to fix. I used to pour the hot wort into the plastic bucket and then chill. Nonsense. The kettle can go straight into an ice bath in the sink and it insulates (probably) far less than the plastic. I also added a bag of ice to the wort (and next time I won't use store bought). Temperature dropped about 100 degrees in roughly five minutes. Hoorah. For the aeration, I went more high tech. Bought a plug-in device similar to ones used in fish tanks which forces oxygen into the wort. The result? Happy yeast bubbling merrily for about four days. I would have been happier if it had gone on a bit longer, but I'm guardedly optimistic.

The weissbier may be a lost cause. There is a chance that pouring it onto the yeast from the ESB may revive it, but I'm not going to hold my breath. If I had a still, I'd try to distill it. That would sort out the low alcohol and then some. Until then, I suppose I'll just hope for the best and drink it as it is.

Ten gallons in a few weeks. Can't wait.