Homebrew!

There's nothing like coming home on Friday afternoon after a long week of work and popping the top off of a cold beer you made yourself. This particular beer is a "cream ale."

I put that in quotes because we forgot the one ingredient that makes this a cream ale. No matter--this is still a very good beer. This batch was our fourth attempt at homebrew, and I think we got a little lax on the procedures since our first three brews turned out wonderfully with little effort. But that's the beauty of the homebrew process. If you have the equipment and you can follow a recipe [and be clean!], then you can brew your own excellent beer. And, apparently, there is a reasonable margin for error. In the interest of full disclosure, it doesn't hurt that we are brewing with friends that have been doing this for several years.

Here is a list of the homebrews we've made so far.

Duvel style - this didn't turn out much like Duvel at all. The color was darker, mostly because the homebrew store ran out of clear Belgian candi sugar, so we had to use amber. But beyond that the flavor was actually "darker" and it had more body--kinda like Orval, which is pretty damn good. This was a strong beer that probably shouldn't even be opened while operating heavy machinery. I think this is our best homebrew, so far

Chocolate Espresso Stout - I consider this one a failure. It was our first attempt to improvise a recipe. We started with recipe for Young's Double Chocolate Stout, and added about 12 double shots of freshly-brewed Italian espresso before fermentation. The chocolate was the tricky part: after [not much] researching, we couldn't find any concensus on when and how you should add cocoa flavoring. So we added powdered cocoa to the fermented brew right before bottling. The results were disappointing. Long story, short--we messed up a damn fine espresso stout with some powdery cocoa that never quite integrated into the beer. I think if we make this again without the cocoa, it will be tasty. C'mon . . . it's coffee and stout beer!

Belgian Witbier - Basically, Hoegaarden White, made with wheat and barley malt. This is one of our favorite styles of beer. Actually, anything Belgian is my favorite style of beer. This brew was a little more exotic with the addition of ingredients like bitter orange peel and coriander. Our attempt produced a slightly darker golden brew than Hoegaarden, but a better tasting beer with a slightly fuller body. This brew was low-alcohol and very tasty; so it was very easy to put away six bottles in one evening without batting an eye. It didn't last long.

Cream Ale - It's the beer I'm enjoying now. I'm not sure exactly which brand this is styled after, but I think it has a classic beer taste. As I mentioned, we omitted one ingredient, malto dextrin, that helps give the beer a "creamy" body. I really don't think we missed out on anything. The result was an easy-drinking, moderately alcoholic brew that would please beer drinkers of all tastes.

Last weekend we brewed a Summer Saison Ale, another Belgian wheat beer with a much higher ABV [alcohol by volume] than the witbier and flavored with lemon zest and paradise seeds. I have no earthly idea what paradise seeds are. A Google search of "paradise seeds" yields 99,800 [bong] hits. Umm...I'm pretty sure the paradise seeds we bought at Austin Homebrew Supply were 100% legal. So it remains a mystery. We'll bottle this beer in a week or so, and it will condition for a few weeks after.

The waiting is the hardest part--especially now that I realize I've just finished our last bottle of homebrew. Buzz-kill, dude.