Thursday 7/16 Rambling

Thursday...it's the new Monday as far as I am concerned. I am going to fight the power and write my updates on Thursday.

I will start with a review of the beer I made with/for Drew. The main goal was met and exceeded, the beer clocked in at 6.8%. Not only is it up there in alcohol content, it is a dangerous beer because you don't realize it is that boozy until you get into that second pint and go "damn, I'm getting buzzed." Amber beer are tough for me to judge because unlike some other styles, there is such a range of expectations. There are the super malty ambers and the super hoppy ambers with no real definition of which on is correct. This one is much more in the hoppy category, but not overly bitter. The chinook hops give their distinct grapefruit flavor to the beer, but the traditional floral and citrus aromas/flavors from the cascade hop are lost in this beer. I have found that my last few batches really lack in the hop aroma department, something I am troubleshooting right now. Dry hopping would really help this aspect of the beer. I plan on making this, or slight tweaks to this recipe again, it is a beer that has promise, but needs work. What I plan on doing is shooting for a higher final gravity, which will increase the malty sweetness and decrease the alcohol content (looking for 6-6.2%). With the hops I will cut the bittering hops a some, bump up the flavor/aroma hops and add a dose of dry-hopping. That is quite a bit of recipe analyzing, I am just thinking out loud and making sure it is on paper somewhere. I can't tell you how many times that I have looked for notes on previous batches of beer just to find a blank page and have almost no idea how the end product turned out.

As for other things, well I am brewing a batch tomorrow at Schooner Exact and making a pilot batch of my Pale Ale on Monday down there (1/2 bbl batch). Planning keeps moving, but I have a real beef with a lot of the planning. Everyone tells me I need to have all of this different shit, some of which could be important, some maybe not. I feel like I have done so much typing and so little doing. So much stuff just needs to be done and experienced because you can't make a plan for all the unknowns out there. As important as planning is, there aren't answers out there for everything. I am obviously frustrated and very tired of sitting behind a computer, that's why I quit my last job.