Filed under: Tasting | Tags: beer, Boulder, never summer ale, Tasting, winter
Beer #3 of the winter seasonal mix-pack. This one actually is a winter seasonal. I open this bottle knowing nothing of the beer, assuming that it is a winter warmer style beer. Then again, boulder puts out some unique beers, so I never really know what to expect Boulder give’s the following description:
NEVER SUMMER ALE
Never Summer Ale is our “aggressive” winter seasonal. Deep ruby red in color, assertively hopped and brewed with dark caramel malt. For the drinking town with a skiing problem.GOLD MEDAL WINNER, STRONG ALE, 2004 WORLD BEER CUP.
BREWER’S NOTES:
Grains: Britich Dark Caramel Malt, U.S. 2-Row Barley
Hops: Nugget, Willamette, Cascade and Top-Secret Brewmaster’s Spice
Original Gravity: 15.2
Alcohol By Volume: 5.94%
A- Clear amber color, with a thin tan head.
S- Caramel malt followed by a sweet hop aroma.
T- Caramel and dark or roasted malt flavor hits first, then followed by the sweet hop flavor, accompanied with a kick of bitterness.
M- very smooth, medium carbonation, medium thickness- right down the middle of the road in terms of body/carbonation.
D- I could throw these back all day like a darker EPA. Slight bitterness with out lots of floral hops. Nothing very outstanding in the beer’s character, but nothing to disagree with, very well balanced. It reminds me of Summit’s Winter Ale, but with less spice and not quite as dry.
Filed under: Tasting | Tags: beer, belgian, english, special ale, superior, Tasting
This is beer #2 from my Winter seasonal mix-pack. Okay, okay, it’s not a winter beer, and it certainly isn’t a seasonal, but I needed a sixth beer to round out the pack. I had a bottle of this many a moon ago, and enjoyed it a lot. I figured another go around couldn’t hurt. Superior is a smaller brewery out of Duluth, MN. As far as I can remember, I’ve only had their special ale. On second thought, I may have had a pint of Sir Duluth, who knows.
Special Ale
A North American style of the classic British pale ale. Brewed with imported English ale yeast and generous amounts of Cascade hops from the Pacific Northwest for a distinctive hop flavor and aroma. O.G. 1.052.
A- Very light tan head, very hazy dark gold color. The head settles slowly, forming clumps and clinging to the walls of the glass.
S- Predominant yeast scent, reminiscent of unbaked bread, followed by a lemon scent.
T- Lemon like, even slightly sour. Hardly any perceivable bitterness. Yeast character very present.
M- Smooth carbonation, and a medium body.
D- very easily drank, I could handle more than my fair share of these. If it weren’t so pricey, I would drink this much more often. It strikes me as a hybrid between a belgian pale ale and a witbier: light, sweet, and very smooth, but no orange or coriander flavors.
Filed under: Tasting | Tags: beer, Boulevard, Nutcracker, Tasting, Winter Ale
While venturing into the liquor store, looking for hours, I found that they had put up a new make your own 6-pack shelf. The shelf had a wide assortment of beer, and I was able to find a couple holiday seasonals that I had yet to try. The first of these is Boulevard’s Nut Cracker Ale. Their website describes it as follows:
STYLE: Winter Warmer
AVAILABILITY: November through December; bottles and draught
INGREDIENTS: Pale, Aromatic, Special B & Munich malts, malted wheat. Magnum, Cascade & fresh Chinook hops
STARTING GRAVITY: 16.0 degrees Plato
ALCOHOL: 4.8% by weight, 5.9% by volume
BITTERNESS UNITS: 31 IBUs
AVERAGE EBC COLOR: 65
Nutcracker Ale is Boulevard’s holiday gift for real beer lovers. This hearty, warming brew is a classic winter ale, deep amber in color, with hints of molasses balanced by the “spiciness” of freshly harvested Chinook hops.
SENSORY DESCRIPTION: Many foods don’t stand up to this strong beer, so rich strong-flavored foods work best. Nutcracker Ale is also a great digestif. Flavor hooks: caramel, spice
PAIRINGS: Hearty red meat dishes and wild game, strong cheese, dark chocolate, caramel desserts
Here is my take on their winter warmer:
A- deep amber red, slightly cloudy but I can’t see any particulate– much clearer than I expected from an unfiltered beer. I definitely did not try to decant this beer, either.
S- roasted malt in the front, caramel scent lingering beneath, bitter hops aroma which is slightly floral.
T- fiery burnt flavor from the roasted malts, fairly bitter and quite dry, reminiscent of an english style ale. Seems like it is spiced, but subtly. What is this spice? Nutmeg maybe?
M- very dry, with a smooth carbonation.
D- I could drink a good number of these on a cold night like tonight. The burnt character would probably turn me off otherwise. Similar to Summit’s Winter Ale, but with different spices.
Here is my second attempt at brewing a from-scratch EPA. If you remember, my last batch ended up being terribly sweet after several months in the bottle. For this batch, I toned down the original gravity and also decreased the amount of hops. Here is my entry in my beer journal:
Leftover E.P.A. v2 12-5-08
Goal: To recreate the previous recipe while improving the hop character, decreasing the sweetness, and scaling the recipe to 5 gallons.
Ingredients:
Malt- 1 lb medium crystal malt, 4 lb briess golden light DME, 3 lb briess wheat DME.
Hops- 4 oz. Cascade hops.
Yeast- Wyeast #3522 Belgian Ardennes.
Water- Bottled drinking water 5 gal.
Theoretical Specs:
O.G.- 1.061
F.G.-1.021
Alcohol (v/v)- 6.3%
Bitterness- 36 IBU
Color- 8 SRM
Procedure: Steep specialty grains for 15 minutes while bringing water to a boil. When water comes to a boil, remove from heat and add DME. Return the water to a boil and add hops to following schedule: 2oz @ 60min, 1oz @ 30min, 1oz @0min. Cool the water to 70ºF and pour into sterilized carboy. Top off with drinking water, to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast and ferment at 70ºF.
From the original recipe I substituted in the Ardennes yeast, as it has a high fermentation 
temperature and similar properties. I used Cascade pellets instead of fresh hops, as fresh hops are out of season and woudl be much more expensive on this scale. Northern Brewer was also out of Light crystal malt, so I substituted 22ºL in place of the original 10ºL crystal. I recorded the following notes while brewing:
DISSOLVING DME SUCKS
Placed specialty grains in water @ 10:36, removed at 10:50
Boiling start @ 11:20, 30 min @ 11:50, 0 min @ 12:20
Copper Cooling coil worked very fast with almost room temp water!
O.G. after moving to carboy was 1.082. Lots of hop trub left in the wort. Will definitely need to transfer to secondary fermentor after 1.5 weeks or so. I should take a second O.G. reading after all the hops have had time to settle.
I never did take that second reading, but given the extent of fermentation in the primary, I would imagine that the O.G. was in fact exagerated due to suspended hop trub in the freshly transferred wort. Oh, I also forgot to mention that I bought a copper wort cooler, and it is awesome. I have never cooled wort so fast, even using banks of snow. I failed to read the tag on the chiller however that sugested I boil it before my first batch to ensure any oil or residue had been removed. I did place the coils in the wort 15 minutes before cooling to sterilize it, but that may have some affect on the final beer. I also forgot to add Irish moss, so the beer may be less cloudy than it’s predecessor, but still cloudier than neccessary.
Here is my entry from racking the beer into the secondary:
Secondary:
The beer was racked from primary to secondary on 1-3-08. The beer was in the primary for 28 days. A gravity reading at the time of racking was 1.020 at 70ºF. Correcting for temperature gives a gravity of 1.021. A sample of the beer was a very light golf color, still cloudy but less so than the previous batch. The aroma was a very floral hop scent. The taste was malty yet not too sweet, with a decent bitterness. There were no apparent defects at this time.
Hopefully I won’t notice any defects later either. I should mention, that althoug the beer was left in primary for 28 days, I could have racked it sooner. I actually intended on doing so, but was out of town for most of the two weeks preceeding New Years Eve.
Filed under: Brewing, Misc | Tags: beer, Bike Sites, Bikes, Brewing, leftover epa, surly
It’s been quite a bit longer than I had planned since the last post. That’s not to say I haven’t been working on blog related things, I just haven’t done a good job documenting them. As my last post mentioned, I bought the ingredients for a second batch of Leftover EPA, and it is now resting in the secondary fermentor in my room. I plan on doing a full write-up of the beer shortly. I have also tasted many more beers since the last post, but I seem to have misplaced quite a few of my notes. I’ll post those tasting notes over the next week or so.
I’m still on break at the moment, but several obstacles have prevented me from completing the beer table and kegerator that I had planned on building over holiday. The first being that I managed to overdraft my checking account for the first and hopefully last time, and the second that I need to move at the end of February. I think I’ll wait until I have a more constant supply of money and housing before undertaking any more adventures.
While those plans seem to be on lay away, the biking world is still going strong. When I originally bought my Karate Monkey, I had the intention of riding it as a winter bike, using those ginormous 29″ tires to cuts through the banks of snow between me and my various destinations. So far, it has been a complete success. I have been working downtown the past few weeks and have been riding the KM from Dinkytown to work almost everyday (save for those few days where the temp was well below zero). As the temperature dropped, I’ve managed the cold pretty well. I’ve been layering various fleeces and sweatshirts and using my rainjacket as a windbreaking shell. My mish-mash collection of awesome (smart-wool) and terrible (5 year old, with holes in the bottom) boot socks have kept my toes and ankles warm successfully. To keep my noggin warm, I’ve been wearing a balaklava under my helmet. My old ski goggles have been protecting my eyes from wind, sun, and various debris.
About a month ago, I ventured over to Freewheel again, this time to by a bike rack. I would have ideally bought one of Surly’s “Nice Rack” racks, but they are hella expensive, and wouldn’t fit over my disc brake calipers. Instead, what I found was a seat post mounted rack with side mounts for panniers. I also bought two collapsible wire cargo… things that attach in place of panniers. The rack mounts to the post with four hex bolts, so I can attach/unattach it in under five minutes. This means I only have to ride with the extra weight when I plan on using the rack (ie, not when I’m on the single track at Theo Worth park).
Earlier this week, I got my first chance to actually put the thing to use when I bought my first groceries since buying the rack. 
I headed over to Rainbow and stocked up on the food stuff. I folded out the wire… things, and slid in my two reusable grocery bags. They fit perfectly. In between the two bags I nestled my OJ and potato chips then slapped two bungie cords across the top of the whole mess. I was suprised how much actually fit onto that bike. I was even more suprised When I tried to mount my bike and discovered how much those groceries actually weigh. Riding was fine once I got up to speed, but starting and stopping were more perilous as the rack would wobble with all the weight of the groceries hanging off the back of my seat. All in all, I would call the racks a success, especially considering I bought more groceries than I normally would. I plan on making a trip to northern brewer in the near future– the rack will be coming with me.
