To celebrate Jacky’s upcoming birthday in September, and her momentary return from Mexico (one week out of a five month trip), I’ve started a Lavender Chocolate Stout.  I’ve been planning a beer with lavender for quite some time – the initial plan, and likely the next brew with Clint, was for a pale ale with lavender and lime – which makes this quite momentous for me.

I initially thought of doing a really strong imperial stout, 9-11% ABV, but revised this based on my ultimate decision to emphasize the lavender and chocolate flavors over alcohol.  And, of course, I simply didn’t have enough time to let a high alcohol beer develop well enough for an early September debut.  (The last joint brew with Clint, for example, a 13% barleywine, is still mellowing out 6 months later.)

So, since I had decided that ABV would not be a primary consideration, and because the lavender was largely an experiment (the information readily available online that I could find is nearly zilch), I decided to not risk anything with the base recipe.  As such, I started with a clone of Rogue’s Chocolate Stout (itself a delicious beer).  Cut in half for a 2.5 gallon batch, and with some tiny modifications, resulting in:

• 3 3/4 lb amber malt extract syrup
• 1/2 lb Crystal malt 80
• 1/4 lb Chocolate malt
• 1/4 lb Flaked oats
• 1/4 lb Roasted barley
• 2 oz Cascade hops (1/2 oz at 60 min, 1/2 oz at 15 min, and 1 oz at 5 min)
• White Labs WLP001 California Ale yeast
• 4 oz Ghirardelli ground chocolate and cocoa (at 30 min)
• 1/2 oz lavender, cut about a week prior (at 10 min)
• Irish moss and yeast nutrient

The smell of the wort right out of the boil is pretty amazing.  The chocolate and lavender seem very well balanced, with a good mix of sweetness and herbal spiciness.  It’s currently bubbling away, and will be racked to secondary in 5 days.  At that point I’ll decide whether or not to “dry hop” with more lavender.  More to come…

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?

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.

Yet another beer post.  At least it’s something, right?

Pope of Chile Town is by far the riskiest beer I’ve done to date, and by and large it has failed.  The intent was to make a super strong beer (>10%), something like an imperial pale, and flavor it with TONS of chiles.  Serranos, japoneses, guajillos, and anchos.  I think it was… 30 chiles for the 2.5 gallon batch.

About 2 months after brewing (in summer 2008), it was terrible.  Most bottles had effectively zero carbonation, with others having somewhere between 5 and 10 bubbles total.  (Inconsistent carbonation has been a recurring issue for me, especially on smaller batches.  Still trying to pin down the cause.)  The flavor was primarily sweet, supported by the incredibly thick body, with a good amount of chile flavor and heat.  The worst part about it was the debris, which would never stay in the bottle.  It seemed almost… salty…  Maybe salty isn’t the right word, but it’s a bit more descriptive than disgusting.

Anyway, I just opened a bottle in the interest of dumping out the entire batch (in an effort to clean out the brewing closet).  Amazingly, there was a satisfying fssst, and so I had to pour a bit of it.  Bubbles!  Carbonation!  Then I had to taste it.  Chile!  Chile!  Chile!  And alcohol!  Still a tiny bit of that cloying sweetness, but verging on the maple syrup-ness like William and I experienced with our very old beers.  It was actually pretty damn satisfying, though slightly hampered by the almost overwhelming chile flavor.  That’s when I made my mistake: I poured the rest of the bottle.  All the debris poured out, ruining the beer with that bizarre salty grossness.

It seems pretty lame to have a beer where you can only pour out half the bottle before the flavor gets ruined.  I think I’m just going to dump the rest down the drain, and perhaps shed a little tear in the process.  Maybe I’ll take the bottles actually go fssst and pour half of them into a glass, then drink that and get really toasted.

Update: Only one other bottle had a fssst.  That means the batch had higher than a 90% failure rate (with carbonation being a major component of success).  Ouch.