Wednesday, February 20, 2008

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.

1 comment:

Adam said...

Justin. Great post :-)

Hang on to that cinnamon brew. The effects of spices always lessens over time. Aroma less so than taste. So, at some point over the life of the batch there will be a sweet spot where it tastes the best.

Congrats!