This morning I finally got around to bottling Jacky’s cider, which of course went into the carboy in early December (or was it late November?). It tastes great, with a really nice tartness and a very light body. I conditioned it with piloncillo, which will hopefully add a bit of molasses character to the final product.
Then Clint came over and we botted our winter barleywine, which of course was originally supposed to be a fall barleywine. Originally we planned for something overloaded with pumpkin and all the spices you associate with it, but we got lazy (and I got busy). So then we said “Oh well, let’s do a winter barleywine” and so we kept the malt and hop bill and just changed the adjuncts to: molasses, apples, orange peel, ancho chiles, canela, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice. Then today we conditioned with piloncillo and dark sugar as a last ditch effort to cram in as much richness as possible. The unconditioned beer is really great: light body (owing to our use of champagne yeast for a secondary fermentation to really eat up the sugar) and very rich flavor, leaning heavily toward the apples and orange peel, with a spicy kick in the throat at the end. This one should be very tasty.
Upcoming projects:
A super secret beer I’m hoping to brew in the next week for a late March event, at least so that I can deliver bottles in some stage of conditioning. Something with a very high ABV, but with a twist of some kind. Brainstorming to come.
Lavender-lime pale ale. A really simple session pale but with lavender oil and lime leaves added. Proportions of spicing to beer will be a bit tricky, I think. Hops will have to be light on this one.
Tamarind IPA. It’s happening, dagnammit! This one has been in the pipeline longer than any other of my ideas, and I’m finally going to do it this spring. I’ll have to decide on a really floral hop so as to not add too much to the tamarind’s bitterness. Or I could just go overboard and make it as bitter as possible.
Another batch of Xoco. This beer is f’ing awesome. The exact quantities of xoconostle fruit that we used were never recorded, so that’ll be a bit of a guessing game. But then it’d be pretty boring to just make the same beer again. We’ll probably modify the recipe in some way, because really I think the success of this beer is really just that the xoconostle is such a great fruit to use with the typical Belgian yeast flavor.
An undecided summer beer. Suggestions?
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