Colorado Kitchen Brew

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 t...

I'd never even heard of Poland's Grodziskie, until I read about it in a Zymurgy article. Not content to simply read about the beer, I've decided to go ahead and brew one. Besides, who wouldn't want to try a beer made entirely from Smoked Wheat? I've mostly followed the plan laid out in the Zymurgy article. The Mash schedule and hop addition times are as prescribed. However, I don't have easy access to the Lublin hops used in the magazine brew, or the correct yeast strain. In place of the Lublin hops, I've used Polish Sybilla. The beer also calls for a clean ale yeast. I've turned to White Labs ,Dusseldorf Alt yeast to fill the role. In a few weeks my efforts will be rewarded. Here's the five-gallon brew: Grains: 5 lbs Weyermann Oak Smoked Wheat Hops: 0.75 oz Sybilla (6.4% a.a.): 105 min 0.5 oz Sybilla (6.4% a.a.): 30 min Total Boil Time: 120 min Yeast: White Labs WLP036 - Dusseldorf Alt Mash Schedule: Acid Rest: 100F for 30 min ...

2014 turned into quite the year of transition for me. I went from brewing two times a month to around once every two months. Because of that, my blog has been rather thin since May. That said, I feel I covered some pretty decent ground. The kind folks at Deschutes sent me a bottle opener and a knit cap for my Red Chair clone , which means I must be doing something right. I also had great fun with my Wood Aged Beer adventure. My first Sour emerged too. I realized a while back that the internet is awash in homebrewing websites. With that in mind , much of my effort has gone toward material for my nascent (and not quite ready for prime time)  Buzz Free Brewer  blog. Over there will eventually be a lot of material on non-alcoholic beer that you'll be hard pressed to find on other brewing blogs. This site will live on, however. I have quite the backlog of obscure beer styles to brew and generally off the wall experiments. This site is the perfect space for them. Happy...

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...

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...

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...