We chose to make an imitation New Belgium Brewing Fat Tire Amber Ale. As there has been a huge hop shortage lately, along with the increased price of wheat, corn, etc. because of all the ethanol production, there was a surcharge on the beer. That's OK though, totally understandable.
As there is a TV there, we got to watch the playoff game while brewing...
We measured out the various dried malts...
Seeped the malts in the hot water, aka teabagging it...
Measured out the malt extract...
Poured in the malt extract...
Boiled it up...
Added the hops, and the irish moss. Next stirred it up in a whirlpool to get the left over stuff into the middle of the pot. The beer then went from near boiling to much cooler by travelling through a sick heat exchanger cooler while being filtered into a big 5 gallon jug. The liquid yeast (100 billion yeast cells according to the package!) was added, and the original gravity was measured to allow calculation of the ABV. The great thing about going to Barleycorn is they take care of cleaning everything up, prepping, checking during brewing, full supervisition, etc. It's pretty tough to screw anything up.
The liquid will sit for the next 2 weeks in a cooler while those yeast cells go to town on the sugars, turning our brown liquid that currently tastes like malt and hops in water into delicious amber beer. Giddyup!
What will the name of this delicious beer be? Not sure yet, but I was inspired by another beer bottle that was sitting there that had a picture of a guy who looked just like Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap. That got me thinking about how the taste of this beer will hopefully be cranked all the way up to 11, and that might make its way into the name...
5 comments:
Those are some pretty good names... keeping with the Patriots practice of not talking about a perfect season I don't know about the first one. I like the Moss Hops... Although this beer's taste will probably be cranked up to 11, the name may have to support our perennial Pats.
I like the cranked to 11 idea also. I guess the outcome of Sunday's game may help you decide - would be cool to celebrate on Super Bowl Sunday with some cold refreshing "Moss Hops." Also, we have to support our boy now that he's the victim of this extortion plot.
Wow, I am extremely intrigued by beer making and how exciting to make it yourself. I think I should look into doing this, it looks like a lot of fun and I bet it would taste really good! Have you ever had a beer called Kelpie? Apparently, it's fermented with seaweed. I got it the other night and it tastes interestingly oceanly, if that makes any sense.
Ya, I highly recommend it. It's a lot of fun and the two previous batches I have made were both delicious. I got an actual home brew kit for Christmas but am still reading up on it so I won't screw up...
Seaweed beer huh? Hmmm... I like seaweed around my veggie sushi, but I can't really imagine it in my beer. I do like extreme beers though. If I see it in the store though I'll give it a try. Looks like it got a good rating on BA: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/80/1556/
As Kramer said on a great episode of Seinfeld, "Do you smell that? It's the ocean..."
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