Summer Re-Runs

The golden saison, crown of kazoo, is back for another round! Capped another 40 or so various sized bottles yesterday, and now an extra hopped mr. squinty is boiling up hops in the kitchen!

Zwicklemania, a brewery-crawl thru portland that happened in January, led me to stumble upon Rogue's Honey-Orange Wheat, an immensely quaffable, juicy brew that I determined on the spot to be my new favorite hot afternoon beer. A quest to clone it brewed in my head. Here is the recipe I used:

3.5# malted wheat
2.5# domestic 2 row

1 oz Willamette Hops added at 60 minutes
1 oz Willamette Hops added at 20 minutes

2# wildflower honey & 2c fancy britches orange juice added at the end of the boil

Let it ferment 5 weeks & bottled it last saturday. It was quite pale, and the honey flavor was strong in the obligatory uncarbonated sample, but we shall see what pours out in two weeks!

Bullseye!

Coffee-Cacao Stout (bottled with help two weeks ago at the new site of Kazoo Brooing) is a huge success!
Creamy milkshake mouthfeel, thanks to the addition of oatmeal to the mash, the typical roasty stout flavors from caramunich malt & a healthy dose of bittersweet coffee & raw chocolate flavor evoke warmer, island times now, in this stale winter season.
Huzzah!

Brewing and Bottling with Friends

Hothead Saison was so good, we had to do it again!

Dumped/drank the last of the failed Tangerine Porter to make room for a new batch last Sunday, the Cacao-Cafe Stout. Bottling is much easier with eager friends about to fill & cap bottles! While that was going on, the extract + mini mash recipe for Saison was bubbling along in the kitchen. With so many enthusiastic helpers the brew went swimmingly, and now the yeasties are doing their part over in the corner. Tasted a small splash of the uncarbonated Stout & I don't think this one is going to be hanging around very long!

Saison Recipe (from Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher)

3.5# pale malt extract
2# Munich malt
1# red wheat malt
1# unrefined sugar (we used Sucranat, evaporated cane juice)

1 oz Northern Brewer (60 minutes)
1.5 oz Saaz (30 minutes)
2 oz UK Goldings (5 minutes)

Special Extras:
orange & grapefruit zest
grains of paradise

Carbonation Problem and Stout on Hold

Waited out the 2 obligatory weeks between bottling and first taste, but the Long Night Tangerine Porter poured more like a bottle of coke than a dark creamy beer. The bubbles were quite large and disappeared almost immediately, leaving no head to speak of. The flavor of the beer was also somewhere in between styles, the tangerine fruitiness overplaying its part and easily drowning out the beer's feeble body and mouthfeel. Rather unfortunate, because I really liked the label I had drawn for this one, & there is really no need to label this beer. Two beers in every dozen seem almost properly carbonated, so we've just been cracking them until one fizzes and drinking that one. At least the bottles, scrubbed free of their previous labels, will come in handy when we bottle the stout, which is sitting at 10 weeks right now.

Tangelo Porter Bottled

Smallish batch of Tangelo Porter filled 36 bottles (mostly 12oz, but including 2 bombers and 3 grolsch) while watching Dallas stomp all over Raider Nation.
Chocolate Stout is still bubbling away in the carboy, but will probably move to a keg for secondary so we can get another porter going before Christmas.
I'm ready to begin tasting the winter seasonal ales produced in this fair city, starting last week with Laurelwood Brewing's Vinter Varmer: A smooth balance between their fresh hop Hooligan ale and the darker, velvety Space Stout, the Varmer features earthy flavors and a warming 6.4% ABV.
Picked up a six of Deschutes Brewery's Jubelale, a beer I had previously written off for no reason I can remember, and found that it's perfect for this season. As the beer warms, the malt and hop characters open up and there's a great complexity here, good evening beer, seeing as evening starts about 4:30 now.
In addition, New Belgium has begun to redeem 1554, a bottle caught between genres, colors, flavors and a general anachronism, by producing a beer they simply call Abbey. It's certainly drinkable, and although it features none of the New Belgium signature papery flavors, I wouldn't confuse it for an actual Abbey ale.

OBC Fall Classic--Judgement Day!

The detailed results of the Oregon Brew Crew's Fall Classic came out by email yesterday, and I am proud to say that the Saison marked 32 on a 50 point scale, or "Very Good: Beers in this range may have a minor flaw (technical or sylistic) or may be lacking in balace or complexity"
The beer was judged by two people (one a novice, the other certified), who gave almost entirely positive feedback regarding the appearance, aroma, flavor and mouthfeel.
In the Overall Impression section, the certified judge remarked, "A drinkable beer, more like an IPA with Belgian yeast. Aroma and flavor should reflect more of the Saison yeast phenols and fruitiness," and the other guy said "Nice flavor, peppery, spicy, not too tart."
The results were exciting, no major off flavors or unpalatable responses, but the real learning experience was in the judging rather than the judgement for me. From the master and certified judges I worked with, I learned how to pick out off flavors and know their sources, as well as how to judge with the perameters of style.