I finally got around to bottling this, after brewing, what, almost two months ago? The (still not quite finished) result is pretty outstanding. Flavors are pretty basic: malt, a tiny bit of hops, and a good shot of smoky bacon. All in all it’s amazingly well balanced – nothing about it screams OMG BACON. You can’t miss it, but it doesn’t punch you in the mouth. And the flavors all go surprisingly well together. The smoke flavor makes the hops into more of a grassy bitterness than any kind of citrus or floral flavor. And since grain goes so well with bacon anyway…
I can’t wait for this one to finish conditioning. It’s remarkably clear, at least based on how hazy Mk I was. With proper carbonation and two more weeks of mellowing, it should be pretty darn awesome.
Up next for bottling is the hard apple cider, which I’ll condition with brown sugar. Then, of course, comes the spiced barleywine. Good times ahead.
I would love to know more about this. Most especially how you got the flavor of bacon into the beer.
Jay
Petaluma, CA
Hi Jay,
It was a pretty simple process: First, I soaked the uncooked bacon in the water I was going to use for several hours. This took a lot of the smokey flavor out of the bacon and straight into the water. It also helped take out a bit of fat out of the bacon, which I skimmed off before boiling. I removed and dried the bacon, then cooked it. At the beginning of the boil I added the bacon fat and let that cook for a while. Then, when I added the grain, I also added the cooked bacon. Once the boil was over, I made sure to chill the wort as quickly as I could, at which point I skimmed off some of the fat which had accumulated on the surface. The end result, even when chilled, is remarkably free of fat.
Thanks for asking!
Jonathan