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

[David Wood]

Ha ha, whoops. I meant I'd be sharing the copius amount of high alcohol beers. The Feestdag is the belgian equivalent of st paddys day...

[Bambule]

A rare work day in Welly, managed to sneak to the malthouse for an hour on the promise there would be a keg of twisted hop beer on. Alas it wasn't to be. So I gave the Maximus another crack, feeling slightly guilty from Jokings faux emotional breakdown after telling him I preferred the armageddon. To be fair I had just ridden my bike from the train so the armageddon was incredibly thirst quenching, the maximus a different beast entirely, such variation in the same style is great. Today, I enjoyed the Maximus so much more, big, bitter, piney, resinous, not a beer for quaffing. Also snuck in a saison, which was also superb, spicy and tart, perfect.

[jt]

It's a miracle - I was anticipating the last pint or two from the keg of csacade ale tonight, so I could put the Motueka pale in the fridge. Four pints later I gave up. Damn it's tasting good after 6 weeks. I went with flame out (well power off) and dry hop cascade, only 1/2 gm per litre. There's no substitute for conditioning ..

cheers, jt

[Stu McKinlay]

Too true Mr T.
Love those magic kegs...

[jt]

And I love that sub-4 beer .. fresh as a daisy this morning

[jt]

Hey, I got another 1 1/2 pints out last night - bonus.
Popped the Motueka pale on gas last night, poured a pint tonight and it has great potential, tasted great. It's just the Blande recipe with Mot in place of the Hallertau - sheesh, what a flavourless hop that is in comparison.

Had a quick hydrometer sample of the Puke Toru - KC III - fermented warmer, if you can belive it in the cold cold month we've had, A malty Werthers delite and stopping a bit shy of the FG I'd hopped for. SO4 stopping at about 70% attenuation - got about 75% for the other two

[Glynn Foster]

Stumbled across Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA in the hotel I'm staying at. Wonderfully hoppy. Didn't appreciate the 7% ABV when the pints were flowing from the tap. A little hungover today :)

[Stu McKinlay]

"in the hotel I'm staying in" !!!???
what a hard life Glynn

[Glynn Foster]

Harsh! I do work, sometimes.

[JoKing]

I had a few beers on the weekend - Stu put a bunch of good ones up that we had. But, I had one beer that was a real standout. A crazy beer. Something that I thought I would never have in my life - for a number of reasons that we wont go into here.

Rogue XS Old Crustacean.

What a Fucked up fantastically stupid bitter beer. It's Rogues answer to the biggest Barleywine ever - and they mean business. It says on the bottle 110IBU - and it would have to be all of that. Bittered with the baddest motherfucker of a bittering hop: Chinook. This beer hurts your tongue as you are smelling it in the bottle. Then you pour it - and its head is bright yellow! I mean - YELLOW!!! The beer itself is only Gold!!!! We put a sample of it onto my refractometer, and it had a reading of 12%brix. Thats right. Rogue finish their beers where other companies START theirs! It was madness. There was raisins and rotten malt with loads of upfront caramel... with this resinous hop aroma lingering around.

Then you drink it. I can honestly say that in my life, I have never ever ever, ever ever tasted such a bitter beer before - but it needed to be, because there was sooooooo much caramel sweetness in there. And bitterness. Like licking on the sap of a Pine tree cut with the roughest chainsaw in the Everglades. Fuck me, it was bitter. I loved it. With all that body in there, and for it to finish dry and lingering... I was impressed.

It got me thinking about a homebrew recipe for it...

OG: 1.120
FG: 1.035
IBU: 110
ABV: 11.2

66% Pale Malt
24% Munich
10% Caramel 30ebc

Hops - all the hops you can russle together boiled for 2 hours.

Anyway - thanks Mike for the experience! You are a legend!

[JoKing]

"And bitterness. Like licking on the sap of a Pine tree cut with the roughest chainsaw in the Everglades."

Thought I would have made quote of the week with that one.

[HerrSchnapps]

It could, but you'd need to pay Luke to put it up there :p