Write it down somewhere!

...that is my advice to everyone. I have yet to post an entry because after I was added to this blog, I forgot my username and password. Oops. As I'm sure Nate has posted, the Indiana Homebrewers Club met last night, a week after originally intended. The group was small, but distinguished. We even had a couple new members. This is important to Muckney Brewing, as we presented two of our beers that were to be saved for the Febtoberfest extravaganza. Fortunately, Dave and I are always willing to throw some brews out there to the public, because tasting would have been pretty slim otherwise. What did we try? I'm glad I assumed you would ask:

Excelsior Stout- This was Jon's milk stout that was rather delicious, despite his constant self deprecating feelings towards it. Personally, I thought it was really good. A little on the sweet side, but overall pretty solid. I didn't get to rate it, but I have a bottle at home. Perhaps I'll get to that soon. I really should age it for 5 years as per Jon's suggestions for most beers.

Muckney Batch XI- Dave has posted on this, and his feelings were reinforced by all in attendance. This is a really solid beer. It turned out to be a Stone XI clone, which isn't bad for gathering up the leftovers from batches 1 - 10. Coincidentally enough, it was our 11th batch as well. How serendipitous. Great hop character, but well-balanced. Possibly a little hoppy for the non-hophead's palate, but very well-received. Nowhere near as face-melting as the Show Your Hop-P-Ness. (We haven't come to terms on an accepted spelling for that beer yet.)

Dark & Mysterious Cinnamon Porter- This was actually my first crack at recipe writing. It could have worked out a little better had Dave and I not 'sampled' so many beers during the brewing process. It might have occurred to us at that point that 12 sticks of cinnamon might be a little over the top. The original recipe called for about half of that I believe. Surprisingly to me, it went over pretty well. I am putting the spin on it that it is "Dark & Mysterious" because it mysteriously has the aroma of Close Up. The taste is decent though. The comments I heard were basically "it grows on you." That is exactly how I felt about it. If we give a second crack at this, we'll probably drop a little hops and lower the cinnamon quite a bit.

I apologize if I have rambled too much for my first post. I saw that someone had commented on a previous post about suggestions for using cinnamon. My advice: Don't use 12 sticks for a 5 gallon batch. We are currently planning out our date for brewing the R.I.S. We are probably going to use some vanilla bean to pair with the bourbon flavors. I suggested we set the oak chips on fire after we soak them in bourbon to get some nice smokey-charred flavor, but sometimes it just comes down to me wanting to set stuff on fire. I'm glad Dave is there to pull the reins occasionally.