Colorado Kitchen Brew

2013 was a good and busy year. I did a lot of new things that really expanded my brewing knowledge and techniques. Hopefully some of them helped people who've stumbled upon this site. I brewed my first SMaSH Beer, Sour and Wheatwine . New stove-top Mashing techniques were introduced. 2012 beers were revisited after time in the Cellar. Non-Alcoholic beer was also tackled. I even threw in a Clone for good measure. Oh, and I went auto racing , which has little to do with beer (or does it?), but it is my blog, so I can write about what I want to. That's a lot of ground covered in just one year. So where do I go from here? How do I keep things fresh? Thankfully, there are still lots of new things I want to try. More Sours are definitely in order, with a proper Lambic at the top of the list. With that in mind, Turbid Mashing will join my list of stove-top Mashing techniques. More wood aged beers are also in the pipeline. Since my desire to brew Big Beer has waned,

This year's Winter Warmer is ready just in time for the holidays. Rather than make 2012's beer again, I went with a Burton Ale. Let's see how things turned out.   T he beer pours with a slightly hazy mahogany hue. A dense nougat cap is slow to form, but generous once it gets going. Head retention is quite good and a nice amount of lace is left in the beer’s wake.   When I bottled this beer, it possessed a generous stone fruit aroma from the yeast. That fruitiness has dialed back a bit with some time conditioning in the bottle. Hops are now further out front with flowers and spice. A light roasted edge from the chocolate malt is also present. In the mouth, the beer starts out with a dry baking chocolate edge. The bitterness comes on quick with an earthy tea-like bite that’s not too heavy. While subtle, you can tell there’s molasses in my beer. It adds the light mineral profile I find desirable in this style. A touch of astringency shows up late. A body that’s not

2013 My 2012 Quad is a year old and ready to revisit. Things have changed quite a bit in a year. A beer that leaned toward dark fruit flavors is now warm and very spicy. The yeast has taken over and really bumped up the coriander and pepper components. The prunes and raisins are still there, albeit subdued. There's also a light toffee note that I don't remember from last year. An alcohol warmth permeates the system and is a little more prevalent than before. 2012   The beer's body is still a little syrupy, but also extremely dry. A soft, yet vigorous carbonation lends a nice tingle on the tongue. A heavy sheet of lace follows in the beer's wake. I asked myself last year if a 12 week wait for the beer to finish was worth it. My answer was an emphatic yes. So, was waiting an extra 12 months also worth it? Absolutely.

I wasn't super-fond of my last Weizenbock , therefore it's time to try another. This time around I'm taking my Ein Heldenleben Dunkelweiss and turning it up a notch with greater doses of Munich and Wheat malts. To compensate for the extra heft, the hops have been dialed up just a bit. The yeast is the same strain as before. Having lost my mind, I did a Triple-Decoction Mash for this beer on my stove. I normally perform a Single-Decoction Mash , which is already time consuming, but I figured I might as well push the envelope. I'm hopeful that this beer will be Weizenbock Nirvana. Actually, I just want it to make those who drink it happy. Here's the five-gallon recipe: Grains: 5 lbs Weyermann Light Munich 4 lbs Weyermann Pale Wheat 3 lbs Weyermann Dark Wheat 4 oz Weyermann Duhusked Carafa II Hops: 0.8 oz Opal (6.3% a.a.): 60 min Total Boil Time: 90 min Yeast: White Labs WLP300 - Hefeweizen Ale Yeast Mash Schedule: Acid Rest: 104F for 20 mi

My final (well, not exactly) Candi Sugar experiment beer has finished conditioning and is ready to pour. Let's see how my experiment turned out. My beer's color is right where I wanted it. The deep mahogany hue has nice clarity and is topped by a dense head that's a bit darker than expected. Head retention is pretty good and there's some lace to be had too. Moving on to what we really care about, the beer has a prominent nose of dark fruits, plus a light, almost roasted edge that I had no idea would be there. That edge lingers through the beer's finish. While I like the sugar's dimension, it's just not quite what I was expecting. It needs to be cut with something else. The beer's bitterness is light and somewhat floral. You can definitely tell that it shares parts with its three siblings. A light body with about the right level of fizz rounds things out. So, what do I think of the final result? I think this was my least favorite of the Candi

I'm not a huge fan of trying to clone commercial beers. I did it once with Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter , but haven't tried since. However, I'm all for a challenge. When a friend of mine asked me to try and clone Deschutes' Red Chair Northwest Pale Ale , I decided to grant his wish. Thankfully, the Deschutes website happily lays out what's actually in the beer . What their site doesn't do is tell you what lovibond Crystal Malt to use, how much of each malt to use, which maltsters provided their malts, and what yeast strain they ferment with. I did a little hunting and found all sorts of conflicting information about Deschutes' yeast strain. The only consistent thread was that they use a proprietary yeast, rather than one of the strains most homebrew shops carry. Multiple sources (including the bastion of reliable information that is Wikipedia) stated that Ringwood Ale is the closest commercial strain. Yet another source said to use London ESB .  I

After a lot of waiting, my Wheatwine is ready to go. Let's see what happened. The beer pours with a hazy mahogany hue and sports a dense cream cap that's slow to form. Head retention is OK, but not great. However, a nice smattering of lace is left in the beer's wake. With 70 IBUs on hand, I was expecting a rather hop forward beer. That's not so much the case. Instead, there's a good sweet/bitter balance at work. Pine, citrus and candied fruits dominate the nose. There's also a healthy dose of fresh toasted bread. In the mouth, the grain flavors are dominated by toffee and sweetbread, while the bitterness carries in pine and citrus from the nose. Even with an ABV near 9.5%, the beer packs no alcohol heat. Letting the beer warm to cellar temp allows more of the woodsy and toffee flavors to come through. The beer finishes sweet, oddly enough. There's just enough residual bitterness to keep the sweetness under control. The beer's body is heavy, dense

This space was originally reserved for an all-grain remake of my Super Easy Cream Ale . That was before I started receiving requests for Porters and Stouts. I prefer Sweet Stouts (a.k.a. Milk Stouts) to their more coffee-like Dry Stout brethren, so that's what I'm making here. As with many Sweet Stouts, I'm using Lactose to provide a sweet balance to the beer's roasted grains. Although not typical for the style, a small amount of Flaked Oats will add a slightly silky quality to the beer's mouthfeel, in addition to a mildly nutty flavor component. The argument could therefore be made that this beer is more a Sweet Stout/Oatmeal Stout hybrid, than a traditional Sweet Stout. However, being able to cross style boundaries is one of the joys of Homebrewing. Here's the five-gallon brew: Grains: 6 lbs Crisp Maris Otter 12 oz Briess Caramel 80L 8 oz Flaked Oats  8 oz Bairds Chocolate Malt 6 oz Crisp Black Patent Hops: 1 oz Newport (9.8% a.a.): 60 m

2013 One year later, it's time to break into my cellar and revisit 2012's Golden Tripel . Let's start with appearances. First off, the beer's clarity has improved, but not by a lot. The beer definitely suffers from a bout of chill haze. The head is less dense and doesn't stick around as long. There's still some lace to be had. Of course, what we really care about are the flavor and aroma changes. I noted back in my Golden Spark blog that my beer had almost reverted back to its younger self over time. Meanwhile, my Dubbel was about the same as before, albeit spicier. This beer is a completely different animal. It's drier, spicier and much more like white wine. 2012 The pale fruits that were out front before are much more subdued. Coriander and pepper now dominate, while the sourdough aromas cut through more. The overall picture is spicy and dry, with just enough pear sweetness to balance the load. Carbonation is still soft, but not quite as

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

My Power-Outage Pumpkin , that was literally made during a power-outage, is ready to go for Halloween. The beer smells fabulous coming out of the bottle. My extra dose of pumpkin must have done its job, because that's the first aroma you get. Letting the nose linger a bit brings forth the full pumpkin pie effect I was shooting for. The beer is lightly sweet, bready and has a good compliment of pie spice to go with all that pumpkin. Yay me! Things change a little bit in the mouth. Baked pumpkin is way out front, without being overpowering. The bitterness is just enough and doesn't add any flavor to the mix. Pie spices also help balance the sweeter flavors of brown sugar and caramel. The pie spices linger through the long and somewhat dry finish. I've definitely decided that I'm not a big clove or allspice fan. Even though I dialed back both significantly this year, their flavor still doesn't work for my palate. Thankfully, the others who have tried this

Welcome to Part 6 of my Kitchen Brewing series. Today we'll be making our very own Non-Alcoholic (N/A) homebrew. Why on earth would I want to make a Non-Alcoholic beer? Good Question! There are lots of reasons behind why people eschew alcohol. I won't get into any of them here. The point is that there are many people who avoid alcohol, but still want the taste of beer from time to time. For these people, the mass-market commercial options are extremely limited. They can have N/A Pale Lager, N/A Amber Lager, N/A Hefewiezen (if they're lucky) and that's pretty much it. What happens if that person wants something else? They're out of luck, unless they happen to live near a Craft Brewery that brews additional styles of N/A beer. For everyone else, the answer is to brew your own. The first thing to understand about N/A beer (commercial, or otherwise) is that it isn't truly free of alcohol. It actually contains around 0.5% of the stuff. That news is import

Lasts year's Winter Warmer brought back some wonderful memories. I could have brewed it again this year and been happy. What fun would that be? My new Winter beer is a variation on a Burton Ale (minus messing with water salts). My original intent was to swing by the store and purchase Maris Otter to use as the base malt. Then I remembered that I still had a bunch of Golden Promise in the house, so I brewed with it instead. The Chocolate Malt provides a light roasted edge. Flaked Corn follows the tradition of using starchy adjuncts in this beer style. A classic English Aroma Hop adds some sweet floral aromas. There's a bit of molasses at work too. An Ale yeast with low attenuation rounds things out. The final product won't be too terribly strong, but will still have a little heft. The finished beer should be perfect for sipping around the fire on a cold Winter evening. For five gallons: Grains: 10 lbs Simpsons Golden Promise 1 lb Briess Flaked Corn 6 oz Baird

2013 I really ought to do this more often. Pretty much one year from the day that the grains and hops hit the brew kettle, I'm drinking the last bottle of 2012's Red Sky Dubbel . This is only the second homebrew I cellared. The other being my Belgian Strong Pale Ale . Thankfully, there are more beers on the way. Last year, I stated that "Sweet dark fruit flavors are out front, bolstered by a bit of chocolate. The bitterness level is just enough to balance the sweeter flavors". Most of that is still the case. 2012 Surprisingly, the sweet/bitter balance hasn't really changed. If anything, the beer is even more spicy. I imagine that's because the yeast is doing a lot of the spice work. Although raisin and prune aromas and flavors still dominate, there's a more prevalent Baking Chocolate flavor that's almost roasted in nature. The body is even more dry than it was before. A soft carbonation is still present and continues to carry just the ri

For some reason, I just can't let the Candi Sugar experiment I started back in January rest. My original experiment produced a Blonde , Tripel and Quad , but no Dubbel. I'm here to finish the quartet. First off, I had to dial back the grain-bill from the first three beers. Otherwise, once even a modest amount of sugar was introduced, the finished product would be too strong. The major change; however, is in the type of sugar this time around. For this Dubbel, I'm using Dark Brown Sugar for my Candi Sugar. The big difference between White and Brown sugar is that the Brown contains molasses. The Candi making process produces a very dark sugar that will add some bittersweet qualities to my beer. It should be a big change from the white sugar based Candi Sugars in my previous brews. For this beer, I boiled the sugar for nearly an hour. The resulting syrup had a wonderful aroma combination of prunes, raisins and a dab of espresso. I really hope those carry over into the

Every once in awhile, a good deal on a beer kit hits my inbox. This time around, I received a nice offer from the folks at Northern Brewer for their La Petite Orange . It's described by them as a lighter take on the traditional Trappist Dubbel . What's the finished brew like? Let's find out. The kit is Malt Extract based, but also has a nice compliment of pre-crushed specialty grains in the box. In addition, there's a bag of Belgian Candi Sugar. Replacing part of the extract with Belgian Pils malt allowed me to perform a Mini-Mash with the kit's grains, rather than simply steep them. Other than that, I followed the instructions as written. Of the two recommended yeasts, I went with Wyeast's Trappist High Gravity (a.k.a Westmalle ) strain. Fist off, the beer has nice clarity and a copper hue that's paler than I expect from a Dubbel. The dense eggshell cap has decent staying power and leaves quite a bit of lace behind. Whether I approve of the colo

Awhile back, I attempted to clone Taddy Porter and came up short. Initially, this beer was to be round two in that quest. Then I had an even weirder idea. The Porter below was meant to be a variation on my original beer. Unfortunately, my local store was out of Maris Otter (a frustrating ongoing theme ), so I used Crisp Pale Ale instead. They were also out of the English yeast strain I intended to use, so I went with Wyeast's London Ale. I'm not using large quantities of grain, because I don't want a very strong beer. This one should land in the low to mid 5.0% ABV range. Whether I miraculously clone Taddy in round two, or simply make a nice Porter, what's going to happen to part of this beer once it's done fermenting is the real unique bit. While I could tell you up front what I'm planning, that would be boring. For now, here's the recipe for five gallons: Grains: 7 lbs Crisp Pale Ale 1.5 lbs Hugh Baird Brown Malt 1 lb Crisp Crystal 77 12

Ein Heldenleben This post started out as an extremely belated review of my Ein Heldenleben Dunkelweiss . Then I realized that this was the perfect chance to compare it against my very similar Mid-Life-Weisses that I brewed for a friend's birthday party. Looking at the recipes, you can see that the only major differences are that Ein Heldenleben has some Pale Wheat in it, while Mid-Life ditches the Pale Wheat for additional Dark Wheat and Munich Malt. The decoction mash, hops and yeast are the same. Let's start with the similarities. Mid-Lfe Both beers have banana and clove aromas that are more muted than I had hoped for. They're backed by scents of biscuits and subtle chocolate. Although the different lighting in my pictures show otherwise, the appearance of the two beers is very close as well. Both are appropriately cloudy and have soapy heads with decent staying power. Mid-Life has maybe a touch more amber to it. The similarities end once the beers hit th

My Dark Session Saison is ready. It's closely related to my Session Saison from a few weeks back, so I plan on doing a bit of compare and contrast this time around. It is also one of the five beers I brewed for my friend's birthday, so I have some pretty decent feedback too. Let's start with the pour. The beer has a nice pale chocolate hue and a dense cap. Head retention is good and a nice amount of lace is left behind. Compared to its Session Saison brother, this beer adds a distinct baker's chocolate bite on top of that beer's biscuits and bitterness. However, the Cara Munich malts didn't cut through with sweetness as much as I thought they would. A little bonus time in the bottle allowed the yeast to do its thing. It adds some sourdough and light earthy funk aromas that balance, rather than overpower. Like the lighter Saison, this one has a body that's more dense than an ABV of less than 5.0% would normally produce. As far as tasting notes

About this time last year, I declared that I didn't particularly care for Pumpkin Beer . My niece convinced me to brew her one anyway and Flaming Pumpkin was born. I liked the beer, but saw room for improvement. Since harvest season is here, I'm brewing an updated batch. The first big change is the move to a very simple grain-bill. Domestic Two-Row and some Caramel Malt are it. Also, I tweaked the pie spices to get a better balance than I had before. The amount of pumpkin was bumped because I baked more than I needed. A fresh pumpkin is a pain in the butt to cut into chunks, clean out and bake (45 min at 350F, by the way), so I figured I might as well use it. Personally, I think the flavor and aroma of fresh baked pumpkin is worth the additional work. But I was questioning my sanity for not using canned pumpkin at one point. Regarding mashing the pumpkin with the grains, I followed Scott Jackson's advice from Zymurgy and did a quick Protein Rest. Apparently the

My latest Wit was a hit at my friend's birthday party. He especially liked the beer's citrus components. Others found it to be light and refreshing. I heard no Blue Moon comparisons, which actually made me quite happy. Compared to My Wit's End , this beer is much closer to style. Unmalted Wheat is part of the reason, as there's much less grainy sweetness at work. Instead, the beer is crisp and dry. The bitter orange peel really does its thing. The peel's sharp flavor melds nicely with the sweet orange peel I also used. Coriander pushes the beer's spicy character along. If I were to change anything, it would be to dial it back a notch or two. Some light sourdough aromas round out the flavor and aroma. Despite the relatively low ABV of right around 5.0%, the beer sports a fairly hefty body. Overall, I'm quite happy with this Wit. Next time, I'll hold back on the coriander. Maybe I will even take a shot at a Turbid Mash, which sounds like a great sub

I stake no claim to being the Greatest Homebrewer in the World TM . There are plenty of homebrewers out there who have been at this longer than me. They have brewed many a fabulous beer. All I'm doing is showing people how to brew really good beer without taking out a second mortgage. A simple setup , proper sanitation and practice, practice, practice are all it takes. Having admitted I'm not an AHA master, I like the beers I brew (with the exception of this one anyway). Some beers come out better than others , but I have yet to dump a batch. In addition, I've made plenty of friends and colleagues happy. With the backstory out of the way, I'd like to focus on what I call the Freshness Factor. Over the years, I've reviewed several kegs worth of beers on Beer Advocate . Since I returned to brewing, a pattern has emerged. The scores I give now are generally lower than what I used to give. I don't think this means I've suddenly become a BJCP