Braggots — that fun little beer/mead hybrid. I’ve made the one so far, and used honey in brewing a fair number of times. I pitched a talk to Homebrew Con and thought that if they accepted it1 then it would be good to bring a variety of braggots to share. The Naked Braggot would be the first.
During our 2017-2018 BJCP study group, we talked a few times about doing an off-flavor training. We’d pool our money, pick up a spiking kit, and spend one session working through a few of the common off-flavors. For better or worse, we didn’t manage to get around to that.
Meanwhile, a study group formed for the Certified Cicerone exam. While I wasn’t able to commit to that group in addition to the BJCP group, there was an open-ended invitation to attend some of those sessions. Luckily, I caught wind of one of their off-flavor training sessions and got myself on the list.
Who couldn’t use some bad beer education?
Continue reading →As we raced to the finish line for 2018, I figured that I should try to fit in one last brew day to end with a nice round number of 30 batches for the year. That 30th batch took the form of Prosody (Amarillo):
I like to keep things organized. I like to have a plan. I’m OK changing plans or deviating from them — even improvising from time to time can be fun. But at the end of the day, I like to have at least some kind of loose roadmap to point to. This even extends to my brewing.
And over the past couple of months, I found that Trello (in combination with a few other tools) is a decent lightweight solution to bring that kind of organization to my brewing. Here’s what it looks like right now:
As we raced to the end of 2018, I wanted to fit in at least one more new-to-me style. I don’t know the Bière de Garde style well1 but the description was intriguing. And while it isn’t much of a clever name, I haphazardly dubbed it Le Rousse2– an ambrée bière de garde.
Like I wrote last time: because gotta keep some on hand at all times. Except… it had been a while. Evil Clone (Mk. IV):
Managed to brew 30 times1 in 2018. Some big beers, some small beers. New-to-me styles, and old favorites. My first step mashes. My first ciders. Let’s to a quick retrospective on them, shall we?
Perhaps because I live in such a wonderland of New England IPAs, I’d never felt a burning desire to make one. Don’t get me wrong, the challenge itself is tempting — but only 4-ish years and 75 brews into the hobby, there are still so many challenges to choose from! However, when the opportunity to get a little hop hash came around, it seemed like the perfect excuse to take a stab at this. And this brings us to Lupulin-Industrial Complex:
People kept telling me that making cider was the easiest thing in the world. (“Easier than making mead?” I’d ask.) Apparently this is true. And if I hadn’t been so stubborn about it, I would have made my batch much earlier.
On the left? Literal Fidelity. On the right? Witty Pome.
Brewing a big ol’ barleywine is a homebrewing right of passage, right? Something you simply must attempt at some point? And so here was my first stab at it — Extinction Event:
