Colorado Kitchen Brew

One of my proudest moments as a homebrewer was having one of my beers selected to be brewed at Mad Jack's Mountain Brewery in Bailey, Colorado. It was the first time one of my beers had been chosen to brew and sell to the public.  The beer was a Quadrupel that I brewed as an excuse to try the new at the time Simpsons DRC malt in place of Special B. Apparently it worked out quite well. The owner and the brew master at Mad Jack's both tried my beer, and the rest is history. For the brewery, my original 5 gallon brew was scaled up from 5 gallons to 3 barrels. The switch was also made to a brewery made Candi Syrup in place of the commercial Candi Syrups from my original brew.  The recipe below is therefore a 5 gallon brew that was modified and scaled up to 90 gallons and then brought back down to 5 gallons again.  If you'd like to forgo making your own Candi Syrup, I've also listed the original syrups. In addition, I've provided two mashing options. At the brewery, we ...

In late 2015, shortly after this blog went on its long hiatus, I brewed my first Kriek Lambic. Five years and a lot of waiting later, it's bottled and ready to drink.  Just being able to start this beer took awhile. To create my aged hops, I took an ounce of Willamette leaf hops from 2014 and stuck them in a warm furnace room for a year. That hopefully dried them out enough to provide little to no bitterness in my beer. The beer itself follows a pretty straightforward recipe. My grains are a 2:1 mix of Pils malt and Flaked Wheat. The hops are the aforementioned aged Willamette. Cherries are a mix of sweet and tart whole cherries from my local supermarket. Finally, the yeasts are Wyeast's Lambic Blend for fermentation, with Red Star's Premier Blanc champagne yeast added at bottling time.   Before I dive into how the beer came out, here's the full recipe for the five gallon brew. Grains: 6lbs Castle Pilsen  3lbs Briess Flaked Wheat Hops: 1oz Aged Willamette Leaf Hop...

It's been a long time (16 months, to be exact) since my first ever Sour hit the brew kettle. After nearly 14 months in the secondary and two more in the bottle, my Flanders Red is ready for the light of day. Was the wait worth it? I'd say yes. I was rather nervous brewing a beer that takes so long to mature. If something went terribly wrong, I wouldn't know about it for quite some time. Then I relaxed, had a homebrew and decided not to worry about it. The result of my efforts netted a very interesting beer that isn't quite what I expected. As with quite a few Sours I've had, there's not much of a head on this one. It takes an aggressive pour to form and quickly dissipates. The beer also has a fair bit of haze. However, what really matters is what happens on the palate, so it's time to move on. Although the guidelines for this style indicate strong fruitiness inspired by dark fruits, my beer leans toward the lighter ones. Cherries, green grapes ...

What I believe to be the first non-alcoholic Saison to find its way to the internet is finally ready. This beer was a total experiment on my part, so I had no idea if it would be any good. You know what? It is good. Let up start from the top. The beer is rather cloudy coming out of the bottle. I was warned that buckwheat makes for a very turbid beer, and that's definitely the case. A dense white cap takes an aggressive pour to form, but sticks around afterward and leaves bits of lace behind. Now it's onto the stuff we really care about. Heating the beer to eliminate the alcohol also killed the yeast. Bottle conditioning the beer with fresh yeast brought the yeast esters right back. There's a definite rustic funk here that Saison yeasts tend to produce. Behind that funk is a nice dose of floral and citrus hop aroma, in addition to some very complex grainy notes. I've eaten plenty of buckwheat over the years, and know its flavor well. It really adds a lot to...

I think what I'm doing here may be a first, at least according to an admittedly brief Google search. I'm making a non-alcoholic Saison. For those of you who didn't stop reading at "non-alcoholic", I think you'll find what I'm attempting to be pretty novel. Saison is a yeast driven style that I also feel benefits from some hop character. When you boil off alcohol to make a non-alcoholic beer, the live yeast in your beer dies off with it. Any hop aroma and flavor that was present takes a hike too (the bitterness remains, thankfully). That's a definite double whammy of flavor and aroma loss with a beer like this. To bring those losses back, I'm doing some experimentation. Here's the order of business before getting to the actual recipe. First off, the term non-alcoholic is a bit of a misnomer. Commercial N/A beers actually do have around 0.5% of the stuff. That means I can bottle condition my beer and let fresh yeast do a little bit of w...

After a very long wait, the four Quads from my wood aging experiment are ready.  The base beer is quite nice all by itself. Dark cherry, plum and raisin flavors are out front. After that comes a light bitterness that is slightly minty. My beer finishes very dry, with a subtle burnt sugar edge. It also has a light body (perhaps a little too light, given the strength) and a mild alcohol warmth going down. Now it's time for my Bourbon aged variant. First off, it has a little more Bourbon action than I would've liked, but it's not overpowering. On top of the base beer is a slight vanilla and caraway edge. The caraway is most prevalent in the finish. This beer is not quite as dry as the base too. As the beer warms, there's a light roasted almond note that was a pleasant surprise. The first thought that crossed my mind when I tried the Rum beer was "now that's different." The Rum aged beer is extra sweet out front. In addition, the Rum added lots of whi...

It's high time a wrote some more brewing advice, so here's the start of a new series of blogs. This series is inspired by Brad Smith's "Multiplying Your Beer" blog on BeerSmith . In his blog, Brad talks about various ways to get multiple beers out of one brewing session. His work is long on details, but short on examples, so it seems fitting that I try his ideas out and see what happens. These articles are also an extension of a couple of previous experiments. One base beer resulted in three Abbey Beers back in the Spring. My Session Saison and Dark Saison sprang from the same base as well. The difference here, is that with Split-Batch brewing, you get different beers from a single brew day. The simplest form of batch splitting is to take finished wort, put it into multiple fermentors and then pitch different yeasts, or perhaps add differing additional ingredients into the fermentor of each beer. In this instance, I'm working with oak ag...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Near as I can figure, Sours are to the 2010s what American IPAs were to the 1990s. They're the hot style in the US beer world and every serious beer drinker I know covets them. I'm personally not obsessed with Sours, but that doesn't mean I'm not anxious to brew one. My favorite Sour beer style is Flanders Red . More specifically, I'm a huge Duchesse de Bourgogne fan. I love the tart Red Wine quality it brings to the glass. While I'm not going to attempt to clone it, I am aiming for a beer that's similar. In keeping with my 2013 goal of doing more with less, my recipe is pretty straightforward, while still checking off all the style guideline boxes. In addition, I'll be adding an ounce of oak cubes to the secondary for a little extra something. The oak cubes will be soaked in Oloroso Sherry first to simulate the effect of the Casks that are used for one of my favorite Single Malt Scotches . Having done a fair bit of research on Sours, I...

My Session Saison is ready. Having recently moved to the mountains, I've come to learn one thing about brewing beer here. Even in the middle of summer, the evening temps drop into the 40s and 50s. This is great news for keeping the house comfortable. Open the windows at night, let the temp in the house drop, close the windows in the morning and have a nice cool house all day. This isn't the best scenario for a Saison, unfortunately. Most of the "city folk" I know brew Saisons during the Summer months because the yeast actually likes high fermentation temps. As in 80 degrees or more. I could wrap my fermentors in blankets in the warmest part of the house and never reach those temps. Of course, I could buy extra equipment to warm my fermentors, but that goes against the grain of what I'm trying to do here: brew great beer with cheap gear . With all that background out of the way, it's time to see how my Saison did. First off, the clarity of the beer...

The beer below is for the Wit I'm brewing for my friend's Birthday Party. This one is more traditional than my last beer , in that it uses Unmalted Wheat and Bitter Orange Peel. The switch to Belgian Pale Ale malt is out of necessity. My local homebrew store was out of Belgian Pils, which seems to be an unfortunate recurring theme there of late. This is the last brew out the door for the party and should be ready just in time. Although I'm not exactly a Blue Moon fan (there are other Wits I'd rather drink), I'm hopeful that this beer will appeal to the crowd that is. Here's the five gallon recipe: Grains: 4 lbs Castle Pale Ale 4 lbs Rahr Unmalted Wheat 8 oz Flaked Oats Hops: 0.5 oz Saaz (7.6% a.a.): 60 min 0.5 oz Saaz (7.6% a.a.): 10 min Extras: 1 oz Crushed Coriander Seed: 15 min 1 oz Dried Bitter Orange Peel: 15 min 1 oz Dried Sweet Orange Peel: 15 min Total Boil Time: 90 min Yeast: Safbrew T-58 Mash Schedule: Protein Rest: 122F ...

I've been asked to brew all of the beer for my friend's Birthday. It's in mid-August, so I have to get everything going right now . There will be five beers in all: Dunkelweiss, Wit, Saison, Dark Saison and Kölsch. Rather than post all of the recipes at once, I'm going to spread them out into separate posts. My Session Saison and SMaSH Kölsch were already underway before I was asked to brew the other beers. The Dark Saison below is an extension of the Session Saison. I've expanded the original recipe to make a darker beer. CaraMunich Malt adds a little caramel sweetness, while Carafa II brings a light dark chocolate edge to the brew. The rest of the beer is as it was before, with the same hops and yeast. Adding extra grains does push the alcohol content up a bit, but the beer still shouldn't break the 5% ABV mark. I'm anxious to try my two Saisons out side by side and taste the difference that two extra grains can make. For five gallons: Grai...