#4 Pumpkin Ale

After the success of brewing with the Festa Brew kits I decided to get a little more complicated.  The Noble Grape sells beer "recipes" that are extract based.  A little more work than the Festa Brew.  I thought I would see if it is worth the extra steps.  Also, with my goal being the holy grail of homebrewing, "all grain" brewing, I thought the Noble Grape recipes would be a nice stepping stone in complexity.

The kit consisted of the yeast, two types of hops (one for the boil, one for finishing), the malt extract, some spices and some crushed grains for steeping.

These are the grains being steeped, the first step in the process.  

This smelled really, really good!

I can hear you asking "where does the pumpkin flavour come from?"

This is during the boil, after adding the hops.

Clearly I need a larger pot!  I had to watch this like a hawk for the 1hr boil, as a boilover results in a sticky, difficult to clean mess.

With the boil over, I transferred the beginnings of the wort to the primary fermenter under the watchful eye of Brewmaster Whistler.

After about a week in the primary fermenter, two weeks in the secondary fermenter, and another week in the bottle this was the finished product.

The verdict?

This beer really benefited from time in the bottle.  The first sampling after 1 week was quite dissapointing.  After four weeks the beer was drinking fairly well.  Still not as good as the Festa Brew kits, which should have been expected as the wort they sell is all grain and not heavily concentrated as in the extract kits.  The beer always had that "extract twang".  Certainly not bad, but also certainly not worth the extra work.

I've got a Belgian Witbier that's aging in bottles right now, made from an extract recipe in a similar style as the Pumpkin Ale, so we'll see how that turns out.  I think I'll put on another Festa Brew to tide me over until I assemble the remainder of the kit I need to brew all grain.

#3 Oatmeal Stout

My all time favorite beer is the Oatmeal Stout on tap at Swans Hotel in Victoria, BC.  For homebrew batch #3 I decided to give the Festabrew Oatmeal Stout a go.  Not typically a beer consumed in great volume, this batch has the distinct disadvantage of being ready in time for St. Patrick's Day.  So I doubt it will last long.

My trusty and ever-vigilant brewing partner Whistler on spill control duty.

The finished product, after about 10 days of bottle conditioning.

My tasting notes are as follows:

• Ruby black colour
• Sweet chocolate / coffee aroma
• Smooth
• Nice subtle chocolate / coffee flavours
• A little smokey (in a good way)
• Low carbonation
• Little aftertaste
• Quite good!
• Score 8 / 10

Batch number 4 is already in the carboy for secondary fermentation and I'll really looking forward to it.  I'm also looking forward to a couple of decent sessions on the Stout!  Cheers!

#2 Pt. II

Here is the finished product, a pint of Morris & Whistler's Blue Moon clone Wheat Ale.

It turned out quite well!  Will definitely be making another batch of this at some point!  The tasting notes are as follows:

• Nice straw colour
• Clear
• Sweet citrusy aroma
• Decently carbonated
• Nice smooth, round flavour
• Subtle banana / orange flavour
• Something sharp on the aftertaste
• Very respectable
• Kelly's favourite

#2: M&W Belgian White

It was on a ski trip to Northern California that I was first introduced to Blue Moon Brewing Company's Belgian White.  It seems that many breweries are making a white ale now, but this was years ago and it was the first time I'd tried one.  It was fantastic!  I learned later that white ales brewed in the "Belgian" tradition have orange peel and coriander added during the brew.  I decided to give it a go.

I used the Festa Brew Wheat Ale kit, and added 1 tbsp cracked coriander and the peel (no pitch) from one orange to the primary fermenter. 

I also used liquid yeast (a weizen strain) as opposed to the dried yeast that comes with the Festa Brew kit.  Here is the beer doing it's thing in the secondary fermentor.  I bottled it over the weekend, so in a couple week's time we'll see how the experiment to make a Belgian White ale turned out!

#1: Festabrew West Coast IPA

Santa brought me a fantastic gift of a homebrew starter package c/w a kit of Festabrew West Coast IPA, the same beer I sampled from my neighbour last year.  Festabrew is a microbrewery in Ontario that also sells brewer's wort, as opposed to the more typical kits of malt extract you see in the grocery store.  I followed the instructions to the letter but still managed to screw a few things up.  Most notably:

1. When I racked the beer from the primary fermentor into the carboy, I didn't do it very gently and a huge head of foam developed, which eventually grew through the airlock and spilled out onto the floor (Whistler handled the cleanup).

2. Due to some other commitments I ended up with only one night to bottle the beer.  And that night also happened to be the night of a huge snowstorm.  So I was unable to get the proper "brewer's sugar" (corn sugar) to bulk prime the beer, and ended up using an organic cane sugar instead.

Whistler and I, however, are not easily deterred.  We forged onwards nonetheless, bottling our first batch (with some help from Kelly) on Jan 12.  The bottles are required to condition for a minimum of 2 weeks.  The tasting notes are as follows:

Jan 15

Flat.  Sweet, cidery flavour.  Not very good.

Jan 21

Nicely carbonated.  Yeasty aroma.  Nice hoppy flavour.  Unpleasant bitter aftertaste.  Overall reasonably decent.

Jan 27 (2 weeks in the bottle)

Well carbonated.  Grassy, sweet aroma.  Copper colour, slight haze.  Nice hoppy flavour.  A little metallic taste?  Unpleasant aftertaste gone.

At two weeks I moved half of the bottles into the cellar to begin chilling, and left the remainder to continue bottle conditioning at room temperature.  My plan is to sample the beer that is continuing to condition at three weeks, and again at four weeks, to see if it continues to improve.

Prologue. Or, M&W Brewing Begins

Last October a neighbour and fellow beer aficionado gave me a bottle of his homebrew'd West Coast IPA to sample.  I wasn't expecting much, as most of my homebrew memories involve plastic bottles of horrible tasting swill.  But I treated the beer with respect nonetheless; I properly chilled it, poured it off into a nice clean glass and rated it just the same as I have been rating all Maritime beer since moving to Halifax in Nov 2008.  The score?  A very respectable 8 out of 10.  With comments such as "sweet citrusy faint hoppy aroma" and "nice hoppy / grassy flavour".  To provide some perspective, most of the beers brewed by the local microbreweries (who brew excellent beer) rate (in my book) between 7 and 9.  So an 8 out of 10, for a homebrew, is a coup.  And given the cost of a bottle of homebrew is orders of magnitude cheaper than the commercial product, I cursed myself for not getting into brewing sooner.  And promptly incorporated Morris & Whistler Brewing Co.  Morris (that's me - my middle name) will be the brewer, with Whistler (the dog) providing the brains of the operation and spill control.  This blog will be a chronicle of our brewing journey.