Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Big Ben English Pale Ale

Decembers homebrew recipe is Midwest Big Ben Pale Ale, slightly modified due to an order error. Well as the saying goes make lemonade out of lemons. With homebrewing, we made better beer with different malts. since I was 1lbs short on some of my DME, i modified my recipe by adding an extra 1/2 lbs of grains to my steeping phase. The final result???? Only time will tell, the color looked perfect, now we just need to see if the added grains makes up some up for some of the maltiness that was missed from the extract. I expect to have some delicious results. I am also going to be dry hopping this recipe to vamp up the happy aroma of a PA.

2-1-14: The result is a fine tasting brew. A nice malty brew and a good but not too strong hoppy bite. Very well rounded.

Pumpkin Ale 2013

My October 2013 brew was a modified Midwest Supplies Pumpkin Ale recipe. I added 1oz of homegrown (yes, I grew some of my own hops this year) Galena hops to this recipe. 2 whole pumpkins went in (around 4.5 lbs worth), cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, a little bit of honey and a pinch of ginger. The final result is a nice warm seasonal spicey (not too spicey) brew, malty, a little bit sweet and not bitter.


May 2014 UPDATE- This brew is being submitted to the annual Samuel Adams Longshot homebrew contest.