Colorado Kitchen Brew

It's November, which means it's time to brew a pumpkin beer! What's that? Pumpkin beers are already off the shelf? Oops. Oh well. I'm brewing one anyway. The pumpkins I bought have been staring at me for too long. I'd hate to see them go bad. This year's beer is a bit of an experiment. The recipe is basically what happens when my Power Outage Pumpkin , Burton Warmer , and Taddy Porter Clone all come together in the same pot. Hopefully the result will be worth the effort. Rather than shoot for a specific weight of pumpkin, I simply baked a couple of Sugar Pie Pumpkins (thank you allrecipes.com ), chopped them up, and tossed them in the Mash. Fresh pumpkins are a pain in the butt to prep, so I figured I might as well use everything. Despite my grumblings, I still think the flavor and aroma of fresh baked pumpkin is worth the additional work. The total weight of the two pumpkins after being cleaned out was roughly five pounds. Last year's beer u...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

After five quick weeks, my Irish Stout is ready for St Patrick's Day. Time to see how it turned out. It looks right. The beer pours near black with a slight garnet hue. The head slowly falls to a thin quilt of foam and leaves a nice sheet of lace behind. The body is dry and very light. Perhaps too light, but not watery. Perhaps next time I'll add some flaked barley to help things along. The aroma and taste are right where they should be. Espresso is the overriding theme here. Strong coffee notes dominate the beer, while a bit of chocolate is in the background. Bitterness is light and has a roasted edge. There's only a slight astringency from all the roasted grains that's much lower than quite a few stouts I've tried. Adding the roasted grains after the Saccharification Rest seems to have done the trick. Overall, it's not bad for a beer thrown together at the last minute. Next time, I'll add some flaked barley and perhaps even out the roasted barley ...

I recently looked at my calendar and realized that St Patrick's Day is only a few weeks away. Thankfully, I have just enough time left to throw together a quick Irish Stout for the occasion. My favorite Stout from Ireland is Murphy's . I greatly prefer it to the old standby of Guinness. I did a fair amount of research and put together this recipe for five gallons of Irish joy. I doubt it will be anywhere near an exact match, but I think it will be tasty nonetheless. To help circumvent the chance of astringent flavors from the roasted grains, they were added after the Saccharification Rest. I also added a teaspoon of Irish Moss for the final 15 minutes of the boil. The five gallon recipe is below: Grains: 7 lbs Crisp Maris Otter 10 oz Crisp Roasted Barley 8 oz Crisp Chocolate Malt Hops: 0.5 oz Galena (13.4% a.a.): 60 min Total Boil Time: 60 min Yeast: Safale S-04 Mash Schedule: Saccharification Rest: 150F for 60min (Maris Otter only) Mashout: 168F for ...

My Winter Warmer is ready for the Holidays. It came out just in time for the first real splash of winter weather we've had all month. Time to find out if this will be worth sharing with the family. When all was said and done, the beer finished with a 6.7% ABV, which feels just about right to me. It's not too strong, yet has enough heft to help warm you on a cold night. The beer pours with a dense dark cream head that falls to a nice patchwork quilt of foam. It has a deep walnut hue and pretty good clarity. Moving past the appearance, the nose is greeted with a generous helping of orange peel and cinnamon dominated mulling spices. There's also a light floral quality from the hops, plus hints of chocolate and molasses. These aromas flow nicely into the flavor. On the tongue, there's a good balance between the sweet, bitter and spicy flavors. Baking chocolate and molasses get things going, followed by good dose of cinnamon, orange peel, clove and ginger. Bittern...

Back in the olden days of my brewing life, circa 1994, my brother and I brewed a great Winter Warmer for the holidays. That recipe is sadly lost to history, but I have a pretty good memory of what went into it. The base of this beer is malt forward, with a low hop profile and a focus on caramelized sugars. Toasty carmelized malts, plus earthy and floral Willamette hops serve as a backdrop for mulling spice, ginger and molasses. My beer's grain-bill is inspired by the Scottish Ale I brewed back in the spring and utilizes the yeast from it. I used a commercially available mulling spice mix that's made up of cinnamon, allspice, sweet orange peel and clove. The finished beer will have a modest strength of around 6% and should be good served warm with a cinnamon stick, just like we did it back then. For five gallons: Grains: 10 lbs Maris Otter 8 oz English Medium Crystal 4 oz English Extra Dark Crystal 4 oz English Chocolate Malt Hops: 1 oz Willamette (5.6% a.a.): 6...

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...

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 ...