Colorado Kitchen Brew

It's Halloween night and Flaming Pumpkin is ready to frighten away the ghosts and goblins. Hopefully it won't also frighten away the people who drink it. This is my first Pumpkin Beer, so I was flying blind outside of doing research and trying commercially available brews. I basically cobbled together suggestions I thought were the best approach to the style, with a vision in my head of what the finished product should taste like. So how did it turn out? Pretty good. My goal was pumpkin pie in a bottle. What I got is more spice than sweet, but I still like it. The pie spices are right out front, with clove and cinnamon leading the way. The sweeter flavors are muted and focused toward dark sugars from the brown sugar and dark crystal malt. Bitterness is just enough, with no hop flavors competing with the spices. And what about the pumpkin? You can taste it. It's subtle. But you can definitely tell it's there. Overall? I'm quite happy and hope that my niece l

Red Sky Dubbel is the last of the Trappist style beers that I'm brewing in 2012. This recipe is closely related to my Quad from a few weeks back. Like the Quad, the beer is very malty and should bring a lot of dark fruit flavors to the table. The main difference is that my Dubbel packs a much lighter punch. Since Dubbel is one of my favorite beer styles, I'm hopeful that this one will turn out well. Here's the 5-gallon recipe: Grains: 9 lbs Belgian Pilsner 1 lb Aromatic 6 oz Crystal 45L 6 oz Special B 2 oz Dehusked Carafa II Hops: 0.5 oz Sterling (9.0% a.a.): 60 min 0.5 oz Tettnanger (4.8% a.a.): 20 min 0.5 oz Tettnanger (4.8% a.a.): 7 min Extras: 1.5 lbs Amber Homemade Candi Sugar : 5 min Yeast: Safbrew T-58 Mash Schedule: Saccharification Rest: 150F for 75 min Mashout: 168F for 15 minutes Original Gravity: 1.063 Estimated Final Gravity: 1.012 IBU: 22 SRM Color: 19 Fermentation Schedule: 2 Weeks Primary 4 Weeks Secondary 2 Weeks

Election Day is coming up soon. What better way to celebrate our democracy than with the White House's own beer? White House Honey Ale and Porter are the two beer recipes recently released by the White House. I decided to brew a variation on the Porter. The original recipe is extract based. I practiced my 1st Amendment rights and replaced the malt extract with Colorado Pale Ale malt to make an all-grain beer. The White House recipe doesn't indicate what variety of hops to use for bittering. It only states that 10 HBUs (approximately 35 IBUs) are needed. I went with some Crystal hops that I had on-hand. The very patriotically named Liberty descendent of Hallertauer hops completes the picture. Here's the 5-gallon plan. The beer should be ready just in time for November 6th: Grains: 9 lbs Colorado Pale Ale 1 lb Crystal 20L 12 oz Munich 6 oz Black Malt 3 oz Chocolate Malt Hops: 1 oz Crystal (6.2% a.a.): 45 min 1 oz Crystal (6.2% a.a.): 30 min 0.5 oz Liber

My Beer My attempt to clone Samuel Smith Taddy Porter is ready to pour. For a change of pace, I've picked up a 4-pack of the real deal to compare and contrast against my efforts. Since I'm not exactly an impartial judge, my girlfriend agreed to blind taste test the two beers side by side in identical, unmarked glasses. I've mixed her notes in with mine. First off, I must say that the beers look remarkably similar. Taddy pours with a slightly larger head, but the beers share the same deep garnet hue. Mine has a bit more carbonation going on. Both beers have good head retention and leave some lace behind. My girlfriend's first comment was that my beer was very similar, but finished quicker than the Samuel Smith. She also noted that the Samuel Smith is slightly more bitter, with more depth of flavor. The first thing I noticed was that my beer has a more roasted edge and is a bit nuttier. It also lacks the unique dark fruit esters that I sense in all of the Samuel

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