What are you drinking ?

[jt]

Ok, so What Are You Brewing was a hotty, as topics go.

Now I'm 15 pints into a keg I only filled on Tuesday and wondering if anyone else has a favourite at the moment ?

It's my second brown with US-Oh05 and it's better than the forst, maybe Ikept the temps down a bit during the scorcher we had in januray

[JoKing]

Had some of Steves Barrel Aged Ales at Hallertau (via a wine theif) on Friday after a hard day of brewing the next Maximus for the West Coast IPA challenge. He has a "Flemish" red going on 5months old, the next lot of Porter Noir (OMG... Fucking mindblowingly AMAZING) and a soured Weizenbock (Soooo complex on the palate - huge presence) which was really really cool.

Also had some "Bring your Daughter to the Porter". Steve was really impressed with this - like totally pleased with how it has turned out. I fully agree... it might need another month in the bright tank to fully soften up, but the roasty characters are developing well.

Back in New Plymouth now... not much in the way of retail craft beer down here, so tested a couple of my IPAs last night... as well as my "Black Beauty" US Porter (out of the fermenter)

Winter Monster: Very bitter and Dry - this 1026 attenuated sooooo much stronger than what I had "crafted" for... giving less body to sustain an extreme dry bitterness. It will be about a month before this beer will be drinking well, so I'm going to have to Tai Ho for a while. Huge Passionfruit nose and palate should hold up for the months to come.

NZIPA: Not carbed yet - but cold conditioned for 12 days... smell of tropical fruit, grapefruit and some black pepper (typical black pepper from NZ Cascade I think) should condition out in the weeks to come. Nice malt backbone, however undershone by the hop presence. Should make for a nice drinking Ale in the weeks to come.

Black Beauty: My lovely assistant brewer turned the econoheat off in the fermenting room while we were away... so this brew would have been lucky to have fermented over 14 degrees over the 10 day period. I'm slowly raising it to 20 (this morning after 12 hours of heating it was 16 degrees) as I'm picking up on a subtle "plasticy" type of phenolic... more than likely derived from stressed us-05 from the cool ferment. I'll give it a few days at 20 to help try clean these characters up. The Ale itself is amazing - Milk chocolate, sweet caramel malt, lovely orange and pine hop characters perfectly balanced bitterness... it's @ 1.018 - and hopefully stays there during the clean up process.

[MrC]

Are you working there part-time or was that just a social visit?

[JoKing]

Nah - I don't work there at all.

[denimglen]

I had a bottle of my American stout last night.

Hops dominate, fruity, citrusy, pungent, catty, a little piney, all the good stuff. Could maybe do with a little more roast.

I'm never brewing a small batch again, severely regretting only brewing a 10L batch of this. It's still pretty young, I dunno if I should let it age a little or just drink it.

Stupid small batches.

[MrC]

Small batches are good 'cos they let you try more things in less time. Significantly speeds up the learning process.

EDIT: I was referring to small batches of split wort. I can see that a single small batch could seem dissapointing when the beer is fantastic.

Small batches are only a problem if you can't reproduce the beer ;-)

[denimglen]

Yeah, small batches always seem like a good idea at the time. When you feel overstocked, haven't got much time, but just feel like brewing, but then the beer's good and you wanna cry cause you've got < 6L.

Definitely got this planned for an upcoming full size batch. I thought it would be quite a brutal beer being reasonably bitter and roasty but shit, it's so easy drinking.

Once I've built rebrewed and confirmed I'll post the recipe, if the second is as good as this one it's definitely worth a brew.

[Nolen Smith]

I do 11.5 liter batches when I'm experimenting, like Ancho Chili Porter or Apple & Cinnamon Infused Vodka Cream Ale (don't ask) and stuff like that. I prefer to do small batches then because the only thing worse than not having enough from a good small batch is having 23 liters of an experiment that went wrong.... trust me on that. :-)

[denimglen]

...well not yet. 'tis my 21st tomorrow and thought I should treat myself, that lot is more appealing than a yard glass.

[Martin Bridges]

Congrats mate. Looks like a hell of a session ahead of you!

[Beer_ledgend]

great haul, You'll love the Brutal Bitter.

[Bambule]

Well done man, got to love that Rodenbach Grand Cru, in my top 5 beers.

[jt]

I hope you've got a good one of your own to complement the others ?
have a good one,

cheers, jt