We’re not weird, we swear
We had a good crowd last night as we brewed our second batch of pumpkin ale for the year. Shout-out to Wayne at Cigar City Brewing for some help with the recipe. This time we used less spices, fewer hops and also upped the caramel malts a smidge. We’re hoping for something similar to the last batch, but not quite as clove-ridden.
In between the brewing (shot of pumpkin beer above compliments of Jeanine) and the drinking, people inevitably start talking to each other. Stuff like, “So. How’d you hear about this?” or “How do you know these guys?” And increasingly the answer is, “I found them on the internet.” Which is inherently creepy, right?
We’ve heard numerous stories now from people who wanted to come… but at the same time didn’t want to come. I mean, we brew at a residence. And they don’t know us, just our internet presence. Fortunately, those same people bit the bullet and decided to come, and many have become regulars. There’s still that initial fear to overcome though. “Will these people harvest my organs? What if they’re not people at all, but vampires?” You know the drill.
Regardless, we would like to go on record as saying that we are actually fairly normal (except for Joel). We swear.
Brewing a pumpkin ale requires plenty of pumpkin
Actually, it doesn’t. A lot of the perfectly good pumpkin ales you’ll find in stores are brewed with 0 lbs of pumpkin. Much of the flavor comes from the spices, like a pumpkin pie. But in our case, we used 10 lbs of pumpkin for 10 gallons of beer. That’s almost 1 lb per gallon, if you do the math.
Check out the pumpkin (which Joel roasted beforehand to get it nice and soft) just simmering in the wort as we finish up the sparge:
That color is amazing. Here’s the first spice addition (of 4 total), including cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg:
We’re actually not quite sure how this beer will turn out. We took pretty crappy notes last year so “adjusting the amount of spices” was really more like “starting over.” But Jeff has informed me that he’s not afraid to brew another pumpkin beer this month if need be. Last but not least, a picture of 5 lbs of freshly-baked pumpkin sitting at the bottom of our fermenter, waiting to accept 10 gallons of 80-degree wort. Mmmmm.
Thanks to everyone who came last night! It was a fun time. If you didn’t make it, buy yourself some gas and come next time.
Brewing recap: a lot got done
Despite starting earlier than normal, we actually had a fairly late night last night. Things weren’t quite as smooth since Jeff couldn’t get there till later and Joel was suspiciously “out of town” for work. Methinks not.
We had a good turnout and brewed another batch of our popular Eye Patch Ale. We also had all 3 beers on tap, which was both rare and awesome.
However, we also had a lot of non-brewing tasks to complete, such as:
- Cleaning Joel’s dirty beer kegs from a private, non-sanctioned MNB event (his sister’s wedding). Seriously?
- Dry-hopping and draining an Eye Patch Ale
- Transferring our experimental stout into 2 batches, one with bourbon-soaked oak chips and the other with cherries and vanilla. Yes, we’re excited. We went a little light on all ingredients since we’ve had some bad luck with overdoing things the first time around. *cough* spruce beer *cough*
Thanks again to all who showed up. Sorry if Jeff and I seemed a little frazzled. Actually, Jeff was probably fine. But I was frazzled. It won’t happen again (it might happen again). I just need to relax and have a homebrew. Fortunately we were able to unwind at the end of the night and drink a few beers:
Man, I love our end-of-Monday-night ritual, even though it makes Tuesday morning tough. I also love Jeff’s weird dribble stain on his shirt. I think it’s yeast. Or dribble.
Brewing tonight: a crazy awesome stout
It’s been awhile since we’ve experimented with new beers. We’ve been concentrating almost exclusively on perfecting our Belgian wit, Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale and Eye Patch Ale. But Jeff is out of town, so Joel and I were given a little bit of a leash this Monday. We’re going to be brewing a hefty oatmeal stout tonight, which we will be breaking into two 5 gallon batches:
- A cherry vanilla stout
- A bourbon oak stout
Both will take a little while to age, but we’re already excited! Come brew with us tonight ? email if you need directions.
A lesson in economics
Will and Ashley, some good friends of mine, came down from DC this weekend. They hadn’t had any of our beer yet, and the only thing we have bottled at the moment is our Laissez-Faire (“A Capitalist Barleywine”), so we cracked one open. Will just happens to enjoy great beer. In fact, he’s kind of a dork about it. He updates an Excel spreadsheet with all of his tasting notes on beers ? a spreadsheet he keeps only for his own edification. But I digress.
For those unfamiliar with our Laissez-Faire, it’s 11% alcohol, brewed with candied ginger, cloves, cinnamon and allspice. We’ve been aging it for around 7 months now and it is ? in my opinion ? delicious.
Will seemed to enjoy said barleywine, at least to my face, and left me a little note on what we should charge for it once we get going as a commercial enterprise:
Thanks Will. In the spirit of capitalism, we shall take your considerations seriously.
Newsflash: We rule
We didn’t realize until recently, but it turns out we are awesome. The breakthrough came Thursday night as we dipped our Laissez-Faire Barleywine in gold wax and put labels on them. Turns out they look GOOD. Almost too good…
Our friend actually took a bottle to Brick Store in Decatur and shared it with some of the staff. Apparently it was very well-received. Of course, he could have just been buttering us up to get some more barleywine out of us. I guess it’s a compliment either way.
In other news, last night went really well. We brewed the Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale without a hitch, despite Joel’s meddling. We also had our first intertranscontinental MNB attendee in Juan who is here for a few weeks from Argentina.
We experiment with an applewood pale ale
Last night we kegged 25 gallons of beer. 20% of this was an experimental beer ? our Roundhouse Pale Ale with added applewood chips. We’ll have to wait and see what she tastes like when she carbonates, but initial reactions were encouraging. The applewood lends a unique flavor, and could potentially be that “something” that takes our pale ale from good to great. What does applewood look like inside of a tepid, uncarbonated pale ale, you ask?
Unfortunately, while we are encouraged about the applewood, this may not be the batch that wins us over. Our attenuation was fairly low, (OG 1.062, FG 1.031) so there are a lot of residual sugars screwing with the flavors. (Attenuation is beer-speak for the ability of the yeast to convert the sugars in the grains to alcohol). Fortunately, this is a problem we will be addressing head on, in the form of the Oxynator, which will allow us to pump pure oxygen into the cooled wort. I think it should be called the Oxynator 3000. It’s that cool.