Pumpkin Oatmeal Stout opened:

I like how this came out, but it's not entirely what I expected, and the flavors aren't quite balanced how I'd like them. I went a little too heavy on the vanilla extract, and I'm going to tone down the bittering hops the next time I brew this - I think I put in two ounces of Magnum, which is usually something like 8% or 10% Alpha. It's a little too much. I like the smoothness, I like the spices, and I like that it's not immediately apparent that this clocks in somewhere in the neighborhood of 8% ABV.

Smuttynose Baltic Porter

I picked this up the other day, having forgotten that I generally don't like Baltic Porters all that much. It pours out extremely dark, and has a vigorous brown head to it. It's really bitter - like I can't entirely tell if it's hop bitterness or just a lot of black patent malt, or both. That, and the bitterness drowns out a lot of other things about the beer. It has a fairly nice aroma, and is fairly smooth and a little bit sweet, once you get past that initial wallop of bitterness. Overall, it's ok, but I'm not sure it's anything i'm going to pick up again any time soon.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Stout:

My mom grew a lot of pumpkins this year and gave me a few, and I wanted to make some beer with them. I had a pumpkin stout that I really liked back in October, and started thinking I wanted to go darker with my pumpkin beer, since the first one I’d brewed was pretty close to a UK styled brown ale. I was drinking an oatmeal stout and it struck me that the smoothness of the flaked oats would probably go really, really well with the sweetness of the pumpkin. I just brewed this on the first of the year, so it’s not going to be ready for a bit, but here’s the recipe I used. That and I felt like I ought to make something on the first day of the year.

Pumpkin:

Get a few pumpkins

Grains:

1 Lb Chocolate Malt

.5 Lb Roast Barley

.5 Lb Black Patent Malt

1 Lb Flaked Oats

Extract:

6 LBs Dark dme

2 Lbs Light dme

(mostly since I work at a homebrewing store, I have a bunch of slightly leaky bags of dried malt extract that we couldn’t sell to customers that I’ve adopted lying around, so I decided to go big with this recipe. I’m expecting this to roll in at around 7-9% alcohol by volume.)

8 Oz malto dextrin

Hops:

1 Oz Magnum at the start of the boil, for bittering

1 Oz Fuggles five minutes before the end of the boil, for aroma

Yeast:

WLP004 Irish Ale yeast

Spices:

2 Oz organic cinnamon sticks

a pinch of ginger

two pinches of nutmeg

a squirt of vanilla extract

Process:

Cut up the pumpkins, clean out the insides, and roast them. Make sure you have a big enough cookie sheet to deal with the amount of pumpkin you’re cutting up. I missed this step and now have a freezer full of pumpkin as a result. Oil the sheet, and put it in your oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Supposedly the skin will just peel off, but it didn’t. Maybe I didn’t roast for long enough. Anyway, if the skin has not peeled off, cut it off. Put the chunks of pumpkin into your grain bag. Bring enough water to cover the grain bag to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Steep for about a half hour. Pull the grains.

Bring the water to a boil. Add your dme and your bittering hops. Towards the end of the boil, add the spices, the aroma hops, and the malto dextrin. Malto dextrin is a nonfermentable sweetener that gives beer a bigger mouth feel. This recipe is low in hops because traditionally, stouts are low in hop flavor and bitterness. There are a few exceptions, and some of them work, but I think hoppy stouts are a little weird.

Pull the brewpot off the stove, and put it in a sink with running water. Fill the sink with ice cubes. Wait for the beer to drop to less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and then pitch your yeast. Seal in fermenter, leave for two weeks, bottle.

Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout

This is easily one of my favorite seasonal beers. Dark like filthy motor oil, with a deeply tan head to it, and almost imposing at a first taste, this once a year visitor clocks in at an impressive 10.6% ABV, which I think is up .1% from last year. This also puts it cleanly in the "imperial stout" category, although the label won't tell you that unless you give this beer a closer look. This is also one of the strongest beers I have ever seen available this cheaply - I got my last six pack for a little under nine dollars. The first taste is very bitter and acrid, and more flavors emerge after that first sip. There's a lot going on here, somewhat like the complicated taste of a good barleywine. There's also a notable but not overpowering hop aroma. This drinks like a dessert, and a few of them will hit you pretty hard. I should really remember to cellar some of this for next year.

bad idea beer?

Today I am going to brew a Yerba Mate IPA. I'll post later and let you all know how it went.

Q: Why would someone with a sub-poverty line income spend almost $12 on a six pack of beer?

A: You haven’t had anything that victory brewing company has made, have you?

The Victory Storm King Imperial Stout pours out dark as way past due for a change motor oil, with a creamy, slightly fizzy head to it the color of very old athletic socks. That being said, it’s actually pretty appealing looking. The aroma almost smells chewy in a way that doesn’t actually smell like cookies but makes me think of them nonetheless. It’s very inviting. This is very pleasantly bitter and solid, and almost a little sweet. That being said, it’s still a little bit smooth, although people more used to dry stouts like Murphys or Beamish or in a worst cause scenario, Guinness, may think it has a little it of a bite to it. That being said, this is on the mellow end of imperial stouts, especially for a beer that’s 9.1% alcohol by volume. The high abv makes the hefty price per twelve pack seem a little less over the top, both in terms of the amount of ingredients you need to toss in to make it that strong, and also in the “Well, I could have gotten two six packs of PBR for this much money, but this is almost as much alcohol”sense. If this wasn’t so damn expensive, I’d drink it all the time, and I’d rank it pretty high on my list of favorite stouts. Actually, I can’t think of an imperial stout that I like more than this off the top of my head.

Otter Creek Copper Ale

Another of my “beer I bought because it seemed like the most interesting option I hadn’t already had from a limited selection at the liquor store next to where I happened to be” reviews. In other words, neither this nor the Sam Adams Mix Pack would have been my first choice at a good liquor store, but hey, you’re not always at a good liquor store and sometimes a limited selection makes you try things you might not otherwise. That and Otter Creek’s porter is pretty great. The label says “Copper Ale”, but if you just handed me the pint glass, I’d call it a brown, with maybe a hint more ruddiness and darkness than is typical for the style. Smells like a brown ale, tastes like a brown ale, drinks like a brown ale. The hop aroma is pleasant but faint, and almost a little fruity. This tastes a tiny bit sharp and metallic, but not in a bad way. I’d gladly take this over the Sam Adams brown that I reviewed in my last post, though. Also, boo to Otter Creek for using screwtop bottles – commercial craft brewers should have more respect for their homebrewing roots and use bottles that can be recycled at home. This is a nice beer, but I just don’t have all that much to say about it. It’s not like I won’t finish the six pack. I just don’t know if I’d buy it again anytime soon.