Skip to main content

Out of the Cellar: Kitchen Sink Barleywine

I recently stumbled upon a box of homebrew that I'd been cellaring for quite some time. Nearly three years, to be exact. I'd kind of forgotten about it, so finding the box was a pleasant surprise.

Half the fun was deciphering my markings on the caps. I'm sure it made perfect sense to me at the time. Three years on, not so much.

The first beer I deciphered was a bottle of my Kitchen Sink Barleywine. Let's see what happened over the years.

First off, the beer is as bitter as ever. I was expecting that side of the beer to dial back, but that doesn't seem to be the case. However, the hop aroma has become much more subdued. The pine is still there, but the citrus has mostly faded. With much of the hop aroma out of the way, the biggest development in the nose is a prevalent mix of toffee and tobacco. They give the beer an almost English Barleywine character.

Once in the mouth, more changes are in store. The aforementioned bitterness still hits right away, but the hop flavor is more pine and anise than citrus. The toasty character of the malt has done almost a complete 180 and become steeped in toffee. This is very interesting to me, as the beer has zero crystal malt in the grain bill. Victory and English Brown are the only specialty grains, so I'm guessing the sweetness developed from the long boil. The assertive hop flavors in the beer's infancy probably masked it.

One thing that hasn't changed is that this is very much a sipping beer. It still has a very dense body and an alcohol warmth that tell you to slow down.

My final thought is that I'm really happy I stumbled upon my box of beer. I'll be trotting out other beers from it soon.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...

Out of the Bottle: Flaming Pumpkin

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...