Out of the Bottle: Little Farmhouse on the Plains

The beer from my Dark Saison project is finally finished bottle conditioning. Time to pour a glass and see how it came out. The Final Gravity came in at a very low 1.004, which results in a 5.8% ABV. That's a bit stronger than the 5.4% I was expecting,

Going into the glass, the beer is rather pretty. As you can see from the picture, it has a deep garnet tone and nice clarity against the early evening sun. The head is rocky, firm and leaves decent lacing behind. At this early stage of development, the Saison yeast is really out front with a lot of clove and sourdough bread aromas. I'm guessing that part of it can be attributed to the insane temperatures here the last few days. The beer has been exposed to temps in excess of 80 degrees. Behold the downside to no basement and minimal A/C.

A nice heavily toasted bread scent sits in the back of all the yeast notes. I'm guessing that with age, the yeast will settle down and the bread aromas will come through more. When I tried this beer at bottling time, there was a fair amount of baking chocolate in the flavor. With the carbonation in place, it has subsided a bit. Letting the beer warm; however, brings it back. There's also an ever so subtle plum sweetness. Bitterness is just high enough and has a pepper bite. The beer gets a touch astringent late. If I do this one over, I'll cut back on the Pale Chocolate malt to reduce it. Other than that, I'm pretty happy.

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Out of the Bottle: Insert clever use of the word Wit here

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In the Fermentor: Flaming Pumpkin

I'll admit that I'm not a huge Pumpkin Beer fan. I didn't have one on my brewing calendar for this year and didn't have my sights set on one for next Fall either. Then my niece came along and threw down the gauntlet. She asked me to brew her a pumpkin beer and I accepted the challenge. I did a lot of reading to see how to best go about using pumpkin in beer. Some people mash it with the grains. Others add it to the brew kettle during the boil. Some add it to the primary or secondary fermentor. The consensus from professional brewers appears to be adding it to the mash, so I took the same approach. The pumpkin was cooked ahead of time by my girlfriend to soften it, convert some of the starch and help release some of its sugars. It then joined the grains in the mash. I really want the pumpkin pie effect here, so I've thrown in all of the requisite spices toward the end of the boil. I've also gone with just enough bitterness to balance the sweetness of the ...

Colorado Kitchen Brew

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