Beer Bottling and Tasting Updates

One post per month - I should be savagely beaten. The reason for the lack of attention to the brog is simple: I haven't been doing much notable beer stuff. I am doing my best to reduce my massive finished-beer supply and, thus, not actively brewing anything. Time is ticking away though and the itch to brew is in desperate need of scratching.

Beer bottling:

Elderflower Ale #2 - eleven 12oz. bottles
Old Tjikko #2 - thirteen 12oz. bottles
Amber (control beer) - fourteen 12oz. bottles

I will bottle the two cherry ales this week and, after a month or so, will pop a few of each to test the experiments.

Tastings:

Two solid beer tastings in the past month. A couple of weeks ago we went to a beer festival in Baltimore. Unfortunately, despite a generous beer pouring policy, very few beers really stood out as great, "must buy" options. A few interesting brews: Lancaster Brewing Co.'s Strawberry Wheat, Pratt Street Ale House's (Oliver's) Cherry Blossom Ale, and Old Dominion's Spring Buck. Fruity and/or sweet really dominated these beers but they were, nonetheless, pretty fun and tasty. Also, a previously unknown-to-me brewery, Stillwater, had two versions of their saison (one was cask-conditioned) with distinctively different aspects. They were both pretty good and it was nice to be able to compare the two side-by-side.

This weekend we went on a beer sampling adventure at Rustico in Alexandria, VA. I tried about a dozen beers - mostly from breweries I don't regularly drink. Eggenberg's Spezial Dunkel and Mikkeller's Nelson Sauvignon were winners; Hitachino's Classic Ale was a real disappointment - it had been billed as an English Ale aged in cedar casks (from a Japanese brewery!). Frankly, it was just Kirin Ichiban. They lied to me. A surprise winner: Duck Rabbit Craft Brewery's Barleywine. It had just the right amount of hops to offset the hops and no funny alcohol taste. It just goes to prove that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a rabbit, it might turn out great. Maybe that doesn't prove anything.

Festival and Bottling

Several beer-related details from the weekend. On Saturday, the Maryland Beer Festival provided a solid opportunity for tasting the area's best (and worst) beers. Still going through the notes though. One of the top beers was DuClaw Brewing Company's Sawtooth Belgian White Ale -just a really great beer.

Also, we did some bottling on Sunday: Questionable Stout, Old Tjikko, and Dropwater Ale. QS is still questionable but, with a finishing gravity of 1.020, it meets the technical definition of beer (but only with a little over 50% attenuation.) OT is a bit light on taste (and alcohol); however, with aging, it may turn out to be a nice, refreshing beverage. DA has a cider-aroma to it but, has real promise. I intended to prime the DA with molasses then changed my mind (since I am not familiar enough with the priming properties of said sugar.)

Finally, we moved the Broc Irish Stout to secondary for a nice aging period. Although many people say that Irish Stouts don't really need aging, I find that dark beers of all sorts benefit from a period to "mellow out".