Page 1 of 2  > >>

Back On the Wagon!

The brewing wagon that is! ha ha! And in my haste to get back on I momentarily forgot that I'm in Missoula, Montana, and damed if it isn't a little tricky to find every ingredient out here a day before brewing. Don't get me wrong, we have an excellent selection of just about everything you could want at one of our three homebrew supply stores, but sometimes certain hops or specialty grains, and especially various yeast strains are tough to find, if at all. For those tricky things the internet works just fine. The only catch there is that you have to give it a little advance notice. You can't decide on Friday to brew a brown Saison on Saturday and necessarily expect to find Saison yeast.

You know what? In this case, the important thing was just brewing again. Getting back on the wagon so to speak. I hadn't brewed for nearly three months or more. I thought the brew day was going to be quite the train wreck too. I was to have my neighbor over and wax eloquent all day about the intricacies of brewing as we went through the process. I assumed it would go down as more of a fumbling scramble, but it was surprisingly hiccup free. Aside from not hitting the gravity I wanted, and not quite understanding the results of some new equations I was trying out, things went perfectly and stress free. As for the yeast, I settled on a Belgian strain. Nothing wrong with a nice Belgian brown ale for the fall!

Anyhow, it's good to be back. Cheers!

The Strawberry Blonde Bride

Two cases of 22 oz. bombers are boxed up and ready for their trip to SC. There, my Strawberry blonde will be featured in some aspect or event of a friend's wedding this August.  Packaging the beer was pretty exciting for me, and next comes the label, combining my design skills with my brewing skills!

We had a great time during the bottling, and I couldn't be happier with the beer. I tried a different method of adding the fruit this time around and wasn't too sure how it would turn out. I re-racked the blonde ale onto five pounds of fresh, mashed strawberries, when I normally add my fruit to the boil. In case I didn't get enough flavor or aroma I also bought some strawberry extract to add at bottling. Thankfully, we didn't have to use it. I would have liked slightly more strawberry flavor and aroma, but the level it was at was actually quite balanced with the malt profile. You couldn't miss the strawberry though, so I'm happy! It was a little like bottled summertime!

I'm a little bummed I have to give it all away, but am really happy to be giving someone a great product. Congrats Lauren and John!

Good and Bad

It always seems that good things are accompanied by some bad things, especially in the brewery. I recently tested the braggot I have going, and was delighted with the results so far. A strong, delicious beer was in it's promising infant stages. A few days later, I had an infected mess. It seems that merely opening my carboy and extracting some of the goodness within to test resulted in total ruin. "Relax, it's just beer," I had to tell myself. Even so, it's a let down. Thankfully, the brown ale I made over the same weekend as the braggot is looking like it's going to be the best beer I've ever made!

It's complex, full bodied, smells great and is very refreshing and drinkable! I really had no reason to think it was going to turn out badly, but was still totally surprised earlier this week when I tried my first bottle. It's got everything. It's sweet and malty with a complex roasty and rasiny flavor, yet it has a dry and refreshing finish. It also has a great balance with a lot of hop flavor and aroma. It's the first beer I've made that I think I need to share with everyone I know. I feel the need to shout it from the rooftops at this point, or maybe that's because I've had four of them (and counting) today. It's all coming together!

Here's to beers!