good2go

iTrader: (2)

Hey man, enjoy that all you can, while you can!
Beer can be brewed any time, whereas they come and go before you're ready. One cool thing though, is being able to have them share a beer with you.

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

I think he was referring to the kid trapped between the crotch and the counter

I would never let small children be involved with the production of homebrew. Too much glass, to many hot things and you can pretty much forget about sanitation...

ApexAddict

Yeah although I've never homebrewed any beer, I could only imagine how much a kid would get in the way of that process.

demoniam

My son's (9yrs) helped to a small degree. He measures out the hops, helps crush the grains, folks the kettle with water. Obviously the hot stuff he tends to stay away from.It's taught him a lot of science, and safety.

ApexAddict

Oh nice man, does he get to test it out with ya too?

petrolmed

iTrader: (8)

Mmmm I'll be on the lookout. So its not bottled anywhere?

Yeah I'm a fan of Aces and Eights. We should meet up and drink slammin dark beer like distinguished champions.

demoniam

I think they are in test/hype phase for the beer's release. Larry's coffee and Epic both had reps there handing out swag and mingling.

And yeah, beers would be great! I haven't been to Big Boss in a long time, I think I'm ready for another visit.

AlwaysBroken

My imperial belgian stout turned out pretty good. Almost exactly 12% alcohol with 77 percent attenuation. Initial taste impression is that it is smooth and balanced and probably not safe to drink in large quantities. Some roasty notes, some chocolate, some plum/raisin/fruit character hiding in the background. Nose is what you'd expect from a stout, with some fruity hints. Has a sneaky but significant note of smooth alcohol warmth which will hopefully disappear over the next month. No harshness. I would say that this recipe is a success so far.

I think it only came out to about 4-4.5 gallons in the keg, with half a gallon of yeast cake saved in the fridge for the next one. I think I need to do a slightly bigger mash next time.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

Picked this up at the local Raleys today, DELICIOUS

ApexAddict

I can't say i've ever tried a scottish ale, i've never even heard of them before to be honest. I used to really like belgian ales and golden ales but my friends got me hooked on IPAs lately. I never really liked the bitterness until recently. I just can't do thick/chocolatey beers

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Scotch ales are a tad different. Never chocolatey, and rarely over-hopped, think more in terms being a rather strong brown ale, quite malty, frequently a bit sweet.

I rather fancy them.

AlwaysBroken

There are actually several scotch ale styles. They're going to get most of their flavors from malt and fermentation side effects with varying degrees of sweetness and dryness. Very little hop bitterness, not much in the way of adjuncts and with a relatively neutral yeast. With the higher gravity ones, you can get subtle fruity flavors from the yeast. No chocolate anything in scotch ale. You're going to get bread, caramel, sugar and alcohol flavors for the most part.

"Chocolatey" flavors are found in stouts and porters mostly. They are going to come from messing around with roasted barley, chocolate malt and similar things that go into stouts and porters. It's not so much that the beer ends up tasting like a fudge popsicle, but the fact that the roasty flavors and the bitterness combined with the malty flavors are going to remind you of dark chocolate or maybe coffee. If you do it right, it's very subtle and the beer ends up vaguely reminding you of chocolate (among 10 other things) rather than tasting like it. A local brewery here made a bunch of chocolate stouts and porters that are WAAAAY too chocolate tasting. It's like drinking a chocolate cupcake and I find it disgusting.

ApexAddict

That sounds pretty good, well I know what I'm drinking tonight now
Yeah I hate chocolatey beers, I can't stand them. But damn dude, it sounds like you know your **** when it comes to beer.

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

When you start brewing and experimenting this information develops very quickly

petrolmed

iTrader: (8)

A good example of a bad example like this would be Southern Tier's Chokolat Oranj. It was way, way too much and just tasted artificial. I imagine their original "Chokolat" on its own is the same. Not trying to find out though.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

Yeah I hate it when they make it to sweep or two fruity or two chocolatey

good2go

iTrader: (2)

Haha, this is Scottish/chocolate discussion is too funny.

I just drank a bottle of "chocolaty" Scottish ale last weekend which I found to be surprisingly good. It was Harviestoun Old Engine Oil - Engineer's Reserve. Although it had a chocolaty note, I did not find anything about it being overpowering or artificial.

Clearly I do love me some stouts, but I too dislike any which have the characteristic of artificially added flavor, like as if they had a squirt of some "extract" added to them just before bottling. This includes not just the overly big chocolate flavor, but many of the coffee/peanut butter/peppermint/cinnamon/chai tea/sriracha/habanero/etc. as well. Though I don't claim to know exactly how they make them, I much prefer them to taste like they are actually brewed into the beer, as opposed to being a separate flavoring that was just added on top of it. It's hard to describe exactly, but there clearly seems to be a right and a wrong way to make them, as I've tried some which I thought would be disgusting, but actually were quite good, and others where I literally couldn't finish the beer. (and I never waste beer)

AlwaysBroken

This is knowledge anyone could develop within a year or two of regular brewing. You can learn a lot of basic stuff from the internet in terms of grain/hop/yeast characteristics, but experimenting gives you all sorts of additional learnings about how doing x/y/z affects the finished result. The more you learn, the more experiments suggest themselves. Before like 10 years ago, all you had were a few shitty books and you pretty much had to learn everything through trial and error. Even today there are a ton of old wives tales about brewing, where people obsess about **** that doesn't matter.

This year I experimented a lot with brown ales (heavy victory one time, spices another, etc), big belgians and porters/stouts (sweet, dry, roasty, etc). I'm combining the lessons from these experiments to make a really complex imperial stout recipe.

I also have done a bunch of cider experiments with different yeast, different juices and different dry hopping schedules. I still have about a billion things to learn about hops.

ApexAddict

Oh I bet, I need to start brewing but I just don't have much room around the house.
Exactly this. Although i'd take fruity over chocolatey/sweet.
Yeah I've become a pretty big fan of red ales so I'll probably start out with that. I'm gonna have to ask around and see if any friends wanna try this out with me. It sounds like it could be a lot of fun as well as a learning experience.

petrolmed

iTrader: (8)

I know exactly what you mean. It is definitely hard to precisely describe while also being overtly obvious during tasting. Funny how that works. But upholding that kind of brewing technique is always whats sets great beer apart or highlights a meh beer to me.



The internet is pretty great. I don't know what I'd do in a world where I couldn't sponge up such informative collective learning. MT.net and beer stuffs are perfect examples.