Out of the Bottle: Golden Spark, the beer that started it all.

It seems fitting that my first real post be about the beer that inspired this blog. My son appropriately named it Golden Spark. It's a Belgian Strong Pale Ale (BSPA, for all you beer nerds out there) that weighs in at 9.8% alcohol. In the future, my "In the Fermentor" articles will list the recipes for my beers, but I'm making an exception this time. Golden Spark is a Partial Mash recipe that can easily be converted to all-grain. The following recipe is scaled up to make the traditional five gallon batch of homebrew:

Grains:
4 lbs Rahr Two-Row
8 oz Crisp Crystal 15L
4 oz Briess Carapils

Hops:
1 oz Hallertauer: 60 min
0.5 oz Saaz: 20 min
0.5 oz Crystal: 20 min
0.5 oz Saaz: 7 min
0.5 oz Crystal: 7 min

Yeast:
Wyeast 1388 - Belgian Strong Ale

Extras:
6 lbs Briess Pilsen Light DME (Dry Malt Extract)
12 oz Clear Belgian Candi Sugar

Original Gravity:
1.077
Final Gravity:
1.002

Fermentation Schedule:
2 Weeks Primary
4 Weeks Secondary
2 Weeks Bottle Conditioning

This beer has really changed with time. After two weeks in the bottle, the beer had great carbonation and a nice dense head. Due to my forgetting to throw in Irish Moss during the boil, there was as a fair amount of chill haze, which didn't bother me. Pears and apricots dominated, with a hint of spicy bitterness. Fast forward to a month plus in the bottle and things have changed. The fruits have faded and let the bitterness through. The mouthfeel is extremely dry and deceivingly light. The alcohol adds warmth to the body as it goes down (it should, with this much on hand), but can't be tasted much. I was really surprised by the yeast I used. I was expecting a higher final gravity and therefore less alcohol. The yeast; apparently, had other ideas. Overall, I'm quite pleased.

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Out of the Bottle: Oak Aged La Petite Orange

I said in my previous post that I'd saved some of Northern Brewer's La Petite Orange kit to age with Sherry Infused Oak Cubes. The aged beer is ready to go, so let's see what the Oak and Sherry did. I've had more than a few Barrel Aged beers that were completely dominated by the wood and whatever alcohol (Rum, Bourbon, Sherry, etc) the barrel originally contained. In my beer, the oak and sherry are subtle. That's what I was shooting for, so I'm quite happy with that. The flavors and aromas from the original beer are still present. There's no point in revisiting them. What I really care about is the changes the wood made. Vanilla is the most significant contribution. There's also a very mild almond note at work. The Sherry really cuts through in the aroma. It provides an extra helping of dark fruits, plus a little more alcohol heat. The beer is definitely more wine-like than before. On a side note, I took my own advice and bumped the priming su

Out of the Bottle: Big Beers and a Haze

I'm doing a 4-for-1 with this installment, and will be bundling my finished beers going forward, rather than writing a blog for each. That should leave me space for more brewing oriented posts. This month, I've got beers I posted the recipes for back in November, December and January. First out of the gate is Enchanted Nightmare Imperial Stout. This beer is an amalgamation of extra grains and hops I had that were combined with some 2-Row and additional hops to create a 9.95% ABV Stout for the depths of Winter. So what if it wasn't actually ready until the Spring Equinox arrived? A beer like this can't be rushed. My beer pours nearly pitch black, and has nice ruby highlights. The head could stand a touch more staying power, but is appropriately dense. In the mouth, the body is a little lighter than I expected. The carbonation is very soft, and feels just about right for this beer style. When I bottled this beer, I was slightly worried that the whiskey and oak were a li

Kitchen Brewing Part 3: Sparge and Boil

The mash emerges from the oven. Now that we're finished with Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, it's time to Sparge. As you can see from the photo, the grains have absorbed a lot of liquid. In a traditional all-grain setup, your Mash Tun has a valve at the bottom to release the first running of Wort. The grains are then rinsed with the sparge water to extract any remaining sugars. My stove-top method doesn't afford such luxury, so a different method is called for. The grains have gained a little weight. There are a couple of choices at this point. One choice is to lift the grain bag out of Pot A and place it into the sparge water in Pot B to steep for 10-15 minutes or more. The other is to lift the grain bag up, put a colander under it and slowly pour the sparge water through the grains into the original pot. I prefer the former, because I get a better extraction rate from my grains. All that absorption means that the grains weigh a lot more than they did going i

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