No brew brew night repeat
Another relaxing no brewing brew night was enjoyed by those who made it this week. With the season officially over for brewing at Matt’s house things are winding down for summer. We’ve still got one or two things in carboys that need to get into kegs but there’s no rush at this point.
The chocolate porter was finished tonight. I enjoyed this beer a LOT this year and was sad to see it go, but the last few glasses of it were simply outstanding. Maybe that’s because when it finished we looked in the keg to find…ice. Yep. The keg cooler is running non-stop and freezing things again. We had to unplug it and will look at it after the compressor cools down.
The first 5 gallons of J’s 10lb brown went into the keg. This was the full strength batch which had no water added after the boil. It was tasting pretty good but is still changing rapidly from week to week. As strong as it turned out to be based on the OG reading I’m not too surprised and expect it to take longer to settle. The other batch is still sitting in primary as J wanted to give it more time so the water added after the boil could assimilate better.
Last weeks J’ale was still fermenting pretty strongly, but looks like it was starting to settle and on the downward side of the curve so we racked it to secondary all the same. The racking woke that yeast up big time and by the end of the evening we had a nice Karausen going again! Wow…this beer is fermenting stronger than I expected. J was asking some recipie questions and although we don’t track much about the J’ale we do know what malt goes in…and it just didn’t seem like 6lbs of light extract should ferment this much. Then I remembered the honey. But could it be we added that much? 3lbs of Honey to 6lbs. of Malt is 1/3rd of the fermentables from honey so it is significant, I just didn’t stop to think about how much honey I was tossing in. Then J found the container and pointed out it was actually 5lbs of honey! Ok, so 5/6th of the fermentables in this beer aren’t even from barley, they’re from honey! That’s not quite a Bragot (a Bragot apparently needs more than 50% honey) but still more honey than usually considered “normal” for beer. And our first tastes as it was going into secondary - Wow. Something special is in the works this year. I just hope it’s ready for the start of next season!
This night was also the day after Matt and Roxes 1st wedding anniversary so well wishings abounded. The expected “first drinking” of the mead for this occasion was however postponed - though it looks as though the year to come will have plenty of cause for everyone to celebrate!
Scottish 80/- is on tap and tasting great! I forgot how long this beer had been in the keg - I didn’t realize it pre-dated the Chocolate porter. The extra time has done it well and it’s very enjoyable! The keg is still fairly full but may have to be evacuated to Chucks house if the fridge doesn’t play nice soon…then again being slightly frozen may be why it tastes so good 
Maybe we should try an Eisbock on purpose one of these days.
The longer ageing times and smoother tastier beers again have me wishing we had more kegs. A little google search just turned some up for $15 each this could be just what we need to build stock and give our brews time to properly age.
This years mead is still fermenting slowly…I’m wondering if a bit more yeast may be required or if it’s just starting to get it’s ferment on full bore finally. It’s a no rush project though so we’ll let it do it’s thing on it’s own schedule.
Bart’s Dunkelwizen is still in the fridge - but with him out of town we decided to keep it off limits until his return. And as tasty as it was getting last week that took a lot of effort!
The Pale Ale was also in the fridge and managed to excape the rath of the tap partially due to it’s one week in the keg immaturity but also because with so little to do the night wrapped up before we had a chance to tap it.
Only effort this week was racking the J’ale from primary to secondary, and J’s 1st 10lb. brown into the keg vacated by the Chocolate porter. Other than that we mainly tested out Steffanies new laptop and talked about this weekends upcoming El Golfo trip (which I’ll be missing out on this year since Amy has to work.)
A nice relaxing, low effort brew night with great friends and great beer.