What are you Drinking?

[derspiess]

Wow.  What kind of yeast did you use?  That has to be about the upper limit to what you can get without distilling.

Some champagne yeast... I forget the exact strain (think it was from Lalvin).

I used a champagne yeast to ferment a doppelbock back when I was in college.  The temperature in my parents' garage was just perfect one winter to ferment a lager.  It fermented to about 12% or so and then froze when my mom left the garage door cracked one night.  I threw out the ice and ended up with-- an eisbock!  Tasted horrible but didn't take much of it to get a buzz.

I'd do a mead just for the hell of it but I don't know anyone else who would drink it.

[Caliga]

If you've never had mead, it tastes very different from what you might think.  I was shocked the first time I had some, but I do enjoy it.

[derspiess]

If you've never had mead, it tastes very different from what you might think.  I was shocked the first time I had some, but I do enjoy it.

I've had it a couple times.  Wasn't crazy about it the first time but the second one I had was decent.  I prefer it a little on the dryer side.  I have access to lots of free honey from my uncle in WV so it would be cheap to make. 

[Ed Anger]

Resell the honey. profit!

[derspiess]

Resell the honey. profit!

I end up with so much honey, maple syrup, jam, and deer jerky from that farm sometimes that I could almost set up at a farmers market.

[derspiess]

Okay, apparently the yeast was doing a little too well.  When I got home with the kids, Tommy looked at the fermenter & said "Daddy, I think your beer is done."  The foamy krausen had blown through the air lock and spilled over on to the lid.  So I sanitized a different airlock & replaced it.  Bam, 20 minutes later same thing happened.  So I had to fashion a makeshift blowoff tube (heh) and that seems to be holding.

Hops smell awesome, at least.  Gonna dry hop it in the secondary fermenter but that almost seems like overkill. 

[Capetan Mihali]

Hops smell awesome, at least.  Gonna dry hop it in the secondary fermenter but that almost seems like overkill.

This is American microbrewing we're talking about.   No such thing as hops overkill.

[derspiess]

The recipe lists the IBU as "100+".  Maybe the strong Columbus & Simcoe hops can cover up any mistakes I made

[Sophie Scholl]

I fucking hate the American obsession with hops.

[Caliga]

I fucking hate the American obsession with hops.

Same.

[derspiess]

I fucking hate the American obsession with hops.

It has spread to New Zealand and Australia

Anyway, there's a time for malty, and there's a time for hoppy.  It just so happens that most of the innovations in recent years have been in hop varieties, which add layers of complexity that were unheard of 15-20 years ago.  Plus it's cool that you can take identical base recipes and make completely different-tasting beers just by changing the hop(s).

My next homebrew will probably be a brown ale with a humble 15-20 IBU

[Caliga]

I don't hate hops per se, but I do hate most IPAs I have tasted, and truth be told prefer unhopped styles of beer.

[MadImmortalMan]

They grow hops in the northwest. All the breweries up there have some insanely-hopped brews. Most of them have other stuff as well though.

[derspiess]

They grow hops in the northwest. All the breweries up there have some insanely-hopped brews. Most of them have other stuff as well though.

When I was out in Medford/Grants Pass, OR a few years ago we took a jet boat excursion on the Rogue River.  We went through an area that had been used for hop farming but was now a protected wildlife area-- you could still see hop vines growing. 

The boat stopped at a lodge several miles downriver.  We stopped there for brunch w/ mimosas, which don't do much for me so I asked for just the sparkling wine.  After a couple sips I noticed what looked like a tap on the far wall, which turned out to be Black Butte, which I had never had before.  It instantly became my favorite porter-- lots of roasted coffee taste & moderate alcohol content.

[MadImmortalMan]

  Nice.

I was just on that river a few days ago in Grant's Pass. There was a busted out dam next to the lodge. I asked the lady who ran the place about it and she seemed pretty pissed about it having been removed. Something about endangered fish or something. They still had all the power generation and transmission equipment there and everything.