Beer reviews

Just a follow up on both the Arrogant Bastard clone and the Summer recipe --

The Arrogant Bastard clone isn't. There is not much hop flavor at all, not like the mouth puckering you get out of a real Arrogant Bastard. The beer is very good, though, nice and malty and strong. People at the brew club told me that for first year hops, I should have used double to get the same strength as more mature hops. I'll keep that in mind for next time -- maybe. I really like how this came out, and I'm hoping I can reproduce it again. It will need a new name, though. Maybe 'Atomic Bomb' since this one can sneak up on you for a strong buzz before you know it.

The Summer ale has matured very nicely and is a nice looking and good tasting beer. This one falls more into the session category than does the AB clone. The Northern Brewer hops are nice, I'd consider using them in Panama Red as a Nugget substitute. Hops substitution charts always confuse me, Nugget is usually listed as a substitute for Northern Brewer, but not the other way around. I wonder why? There are other cases where the substitutions are not reciprocal.

Toasted some grain

I was reading 'Radical Brewing' and was inspired to try toasting some grain for a brown ale I'm planning to brew next weekend. It was pretty easy, and smells really good. I put 8 lbs of 2-row into two pyrex cake pans, 13 x 9, I think. I put them in the oven at 200F for 30 minutes, then bumped the temp to 350F for 10 more minutes.

Massive blowoff!

I'm not sure what happened with that last batch of Panama Red. It ended up a little short on volume, so there is a lot of head space in the fermenters. Still, the yeast managed to work itself up and out of the air lock. Not a huge mess or anything, but still. The only time I've had blowoff like this was with that batch of weiss beer last summer, and that is to be expected with a weiss.

Batch 77, Panama Red

A little different. I still don't have any Nugget, so I used Galena again. But not just any Galena, it's "Super Galena". Rob from my brew club got a big pile of it that he shared at a recent club meeting.

10 gallon batch

20.25 lbs 2-row
1.5 lbs Crystal 60
4 oz Chocolate malt
Mash for 60 minutes at 153F.

2 oz Mt Hood, FWH
1.5 oz Super Galena, 60 min
2 oz Cascade, 30 min
2 oz Cascade, 5 min
2 oz Mt Hood, 5 min

Wyeast 1272, 2 quarts slurry

OG: 1.056, actual

I found a pic of the New Riders of the Purple Sage record "Panama Red", which is where the name came from for this beer. I saw NRPS play in Portland, OR, in probably 1975 or 76. Those were different days.

Summer is on tap

I put the first keg of Summer on tap today. It seems appropriate since today is the 4th of July, which many herald as the first day of the summer season. The first taste test is just okay. I had just put it in the refrigerator, so it was still at about 65F, not really serving temp for this beer. The hops flavor is good, definite Cascade flavor, plus a nice bittering. The color is darker than I expected, maybe 10 or 11 instead of 7 SRM. This is the first pint and I've got the initial pull of sediment off of the bottom, so it is cloudy and probably the cause of the darker color. I expect this will settle out and clear up to be closer to 7.