Beers-a-Plenty

My adventures in homebrewing continue to impress (me, anyway). Last weekend Joe and I decided to brew a Hogaarden-esque summer white beer. But before I talk about that, let me backtrack for just a second. A month or so ago Joe decided he wanted to brew a Belgian Abbey. This was quite experimental for us as the recipe called for all kinds of ingredients we had never used before such as honey, belgian candy, and corriander. We were quite nervous about the whole ordeal, but in the end the beer came out wonderful - one of our bests, in fact. So, when we decided to forge ahead into the realm of summer whites it didn't phase us that the recipe called for rice hulls, flaked oats, and other grains that needed to be mashed*. Things were going quite well...until we made a simple calculational mistake and added over twice the amount of sugar we had wanted. This is a BIG problem, as the beer would then turn out with a much higher alchohol content and sweetness. To remedy this, we doubled everything we could double (corriander, orange zest, wheat extract) and left the rest up to the gods of homebrew. The mashing process had been completed at that point so we couldn't double the rice hulls or the flaked oats. So really it's no longer a summer white but now two summer off-whites. And yet, I have faith they'll turn out to be quite satisfactory.

Why do I have such confidence? Well, mainly because the oatmeal stout that we brewed a few months back here at the Nolan's is magnificent. Our stouts just keep getting better and better; if these keeps up we'll have to open up our own brewery. Our signature beers will of course be Redbeard's Pumpkin Ale and Sneak's Coffee Stout; the house beers will be the Oatmeal Stout and the Belgian Abbey.

Look out Leopold Bro's.

* Mashing is painfully slow process by which all sugars are drawn from the grains and included in the beer for the yeast to feed on. Normall we practice extract brewing which eliminates the need for mashing grains.