A Beer Review? Really?

Four of them in fact! Imagine that, a beer blog with a few beer reviews!

First up, Great Divide Wolfgang Doppelbock Lager.

I'll keep this one simple, Wow. Balanced, smooth, a few hops in there, dead on style. I need to go stock up on this one for the fall and figure out how to rig my kegerator as a place to start lagering. Buy this beer now! My rating, 5 pints out of 5.

My Homebrew Red IPA Hybrid:

This is the 2nd batch of this I have made. My thought when designing this one was, hey I really like Red Ales, I really like hops so let's try to combine them. I'll call it "Redstone" Red IPA. 1st batch was spit on, malty, smooth, good hop kick and it clocked in at a sneaky 8.5%abv. 2nd batch I fooled around with the hop bill a bit and ended up with a much different brew. Sweeter, more flowery, not as much bite on the end. Still good but the Ukrainian judge takes off a half point for the landing. Let's call this one a solid 3 pints out of 5.

Now to the not so hot reviews.

Bomb Lager:

I had a 6 pack of this dropped off at my house by the local rep! I'll give them an A for effort. The cans are very cool with nice art work and boy do I wish the beer could live up to the art and devotion of the area rep. It is called a Helles Lager. Sure, if Miller Lite claims to be a true Pilsner then I guess this is a Helles. Pretty strange up front, I get orange? Reminds me of Sundrop, fizz sticks around and the flavor just disappears. Sure I guess it is smooth but, eh, not much else doing with this one. 1.5 pints out of 5.

Last and least....

Batch 19 Pre-Prohibition Lager:

Ok, maybe the ones I got sat in a hot truck for a month. Tasted like a skunked Milwaukee's Best. So yeah, yuck. If this is truly what Pre-prohibition beer tasted like maybe it's a good thing they stopped making it. .5 a pint out of 5.

That is it for now dear readers,
Happy Drinking!!

Homebrew: Berliner Weisse Edition

A quick update on my homebrewing front.  Taco Mac is sponsoring a homebrew competition this month and I plan on entering my "Redstone" Irish Red IPA hybrid beer.  Only batch I have to bottle up is the second batch where I had to use Columbus instead of Citra hops and I threw in some of the Tettnang and Hallertauer hops I had left from my dunkelwiezen.  Still a pretty good beer but a tad sweeter than the first batch.  I don't like it as much but have several buddies who tried both batches and they like this one better.  Guess I'll have to wait and see how it turn out.

As for bottling the beer, I tried a home solution to the beer gun about a month or so ago with the last dunkelwiezen and smoked stout.  Plan on popping a bottle of the dunkel tonight to see if the carbonation has held.

On to my latest brew day, did a Berliner Weisse 2 weeks ago.  Learned from the Dunkel regarding using rice hulls during the sparge, worked really well, nothing stuck this time!  Why a Berliner Weisse?  I don't know, figured I like wheat beers and I like sour beers so why not try the only sour wheat beer there is eh?  Should be pretty easy drinking right now best guess is it will clock in around 3.5% abv or so.  Makes it a really nice session beer for the late summer.  Looks like the perfect color in the primary, still bubbling away a little bit.  My wife went down to the basement a few days after I pitched the yeast and she came up complaining that we must have a sewage leak.... Yep that's wheat yeast and Lactobacillus for you.  Anyway, plan to move it over to the secondary in the next few days and then letting it work for another month or so....Hmm maybe the first football game would be a good time to debut this one.

Happy Drinking!!

Dunkelweizen Kegged Up

Got the Dunkelweizen Kegged up last night. Should be able to grab a few sips before heading out to Colorado this weekend. Final Gravity clocked in at 1.014 and 4.7% abv. Not too bad considering the stuck sparge. I think next time I brew this one, with the addition of rice hulls, I should be able to kick the abv% up just a tad, but really 4.7% is pretty dead on where I wanted to end up. It smells just right for a nice wheat based beer. Looking forward to giving it a try.

Happy Drinking!!