Colorado Kitchen Brew

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...