Brew Day!!

Brandon and I took a little bit of time this afternoon to brew and do some work with past brews.  As I'm writing this, I'm having a taste of a Strong Belgian Golden Ale that Brandon and I brewed a couple of months ago.  It's not the best Belgian I have ever had, but it was our first attempt, and overall I'm pretty satisfied with it.  Good, strong malt profile along with some fruity esters associated with the Belgian yeast we used to ferment.  Yes, I am drinking it out of a Sam Adams glass (thanks to Craft Brew Week at El Bait Shop!).

Anyway, back to brew day.  Our goal today was to brew a Doppelbock for Brandon and I was working on a special request brew for my girlfriend.  My instructions were to brew a fruity, summer ale for her.  I know that she doesn't like really hoppy beers, so I am keeping the bitterness low.  However, I am going for a grapefruit taste and a lavender smell (I know, it's a little goofy, but I'm going to give it a shot!).  Unfortunately, the brew store didn't have one of the hop varieties in stock that I wanted to use, and none of the substitutes really were what I wanted either...so I decided to wait until I can find some Saaz hops somewhere!  So, our busy brew day got a little bit less busy.  We still had to brew Brandon's Doppelbock, bottle my Numb Nut Brown Ale and bottle Brandon's Berliner...with a twist!

Brandon's Berliner is a very sour beer, but we are working on some other interesting iterations of this beer.  This time, Brandon bottled half of the batch like normal...the remaining half he simmered some blueberries and let it sit in the secondary fermenter a little bit longer to try and add some fruity flavors to the mix.  So, we bottled about 3 gallons of that and, what I found interesting, is that even though he used only blueberries...the beer turned out a surprising light pink color!  I'm really eager to try some of that!

As we were doing our bottling of the Blueberry Berliner, we were also moving right along with brewing the Dopplebock (as yet to be named!).

Hot Break!!!

First hop addition...German Tettnang, if I remember correctly.

Mmmm...hops!!  Love how they turn the beer green!

When I brewed my second edition of Numb Nut Brown Ale, we apparently had an extremely vigorous boil going on, because instead of ending up with 5 gallons of finished beer, we only ended up with about 4.25 gallons.  Regardless, we went ahead and bottled that today as well.  So, even though we weren't able to get the Sweet Celebration Ale (named because it will be in honor of my girlfriend's birthday as well as her hard-earned graduation from college!!) brewed, we were able to get a lot accomplished on an extremely hot and sticky day!  I came back home with a growler of the Belgian, 42 bottles of Numb Nut Brown Ale as well as a few bottles of Brandon's American Pale Ale.  Now, if only I knew some people who liked craft beer to give some bottles away for some "taste evaluation"!!  Any takers! :)

I think I'll finish my glass of Belgian Blonde and see if I can't figure out a way to get my girlfriend's beer brewed and perfected in time for graduation!  Have a great night everyone!