Skip to main content

Out of the Bottle: Kitchen Sink Barleywine

I feel like my Kitchen Sink Barleywine is finally ready to review. It's been a long wait, but I think the results were worth it.

Sink pours into my snifter with a deep chestnut brown hue that has decent clarity. A generous head provides nice retention and leaves a solid serving of lace behind. Pine, oak, orange marmalade, citrus and lightly toasted bread greet the nose. The hop aromas are way out front, but not overpowering. In the mouth, the 87 IBUs bring a forceful bitter bite that carries the pine and citrus from the nose, without being overly grapefruit happy. Malts are there with a toasted edge. There's not much sweetness to be found outside some of the hop flavors, but that's OK by me. The bitterness lingers long into the finish. The roughly 9.5% ABV adds a nice warmth going down, but the alcohol is otherwise well masked. Letting the beer warm to cellar temperature makes the experience even better.

The beer's body is substantial from the large grain-bill and oily from the hops. Its considerable heft creates a sipping drink that discourages you from imbibing too quickly. Soft carbonation that seems part and parcel with all my bottle-conditioned brews rounds things out.

Overall? I'm pretty happy with my mash-up of leftovers. Perhaps I'll clean the cupboard with another one of these in 2013.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

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...

In the Fermentor: Kitchen Sink Barleywine

The Leftovers It's time for a cleanup of leftover grains and partially used packets of hops from 2012. With the exception of the 2-Row base malt, everything in the recipe below has been sitting on the shelf, or in the fridge waiting to be used. I had several open hop packages, some leftover toasted malts and a half-full bottle of malt extract too. I also had yeast cultured from my White House Honey Porter . My decision was to use almost all of my leftovers and make a partial-mash Barleywine. The finished beer will be quite strong and quite bitter. A toasted malt backbone should nicely complement pine, spice and citrus hop flavors. Because of the beer's strength, it will not be ready for at least three months and should improve with age. The recipe has been scaled up to five gallons from the 2.5 gallons I actually brewed: Grains: 9 lbs Rahr 2-Row 8.5 oz Victory 7.5 oz Brown Hops: Bittering: 0.75 oz Chinook (11.1% a.a.): 60 min 0.5 oz Colum...

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 ...