Sunday, November 6, 2011

Brewing for my Bro, and Drinking With my Bro

After relaxing on Friday night, I had work to do the next day.
Heading into Brewcraft and trying the shop keepers golden ale 'with a bit more hops' (well, it was nearly midday), I grabbed some brew enhancer dextrose, some Hallertau and yeast, before Stass took me out to his place...and we proceeded to try all of our stock of kegged beer. Ok, we should have just got brewing straight away, but Stass was too excited to have me taste the coffee beer we will be putting up against Team Harrod next weekend. Then of course, I had to try it against the other coffee beer he made with the wattleseed we have been experimenting with recently...and then there was our previous mulberry molasses beer to see what I had to improve on with these next brews...then the homebrew Cooper's Pale Stass wanted me to taste to see if the alcohol really was as high as he had worked out from his final gravity reading...then the Russian Imperial Stout had its 2 month tasting to see if it was aging in the right way.

So with the hard part of brewing beer out of the way, we could just relax into actually brewing the two beers I was trialing for my brothers wedding in 4 weeks. Having picked up some mulberry and grape molasses during the week, I made up the two pots and ended up with 15 litres of each, which I to taste next weekend. Actually, the grape one was looking pretty good, and with a higher gravity reading, we may be able to get a bit more alcohol or body out of the beer which would be good, especially being able to take a grape 'beer' to a wedding of two people that enjoy there wine more than beer (yeah, I don't get why they would like wine more either).

Having finished with Stass and getting a lift home from Jess (lucky, as was feeling the effects of the hard work I had put in drinking before before brewing) I had enough time to sober up a bit before meeting up with my brother at the Royston for a very quiet parma and a couple of beers. Everyone must have been enjoying the good weather and cranking the bbq. So, with the pub basically to ourselves, we first tried the Moon Dog Pumpkin Porter. I have to say I couldn't taste any pumpkin, but then didn't really expect to. I assumed there would be a bit more body in the beer, and felt this was found to be correct. Where I was surprised with in the amount of roasted malt I could taste, and just how this lingered dryly on the back once you swallowed it. I can only think that maybe the brewers thought some sweetness may come from the pumpkin and so they felt the need to use a darker malt to balance it off.
With not much else on offer for a man who frequents this pub as often as I do, the only other beer I wanted to try was the Little Creatures 'Big Dipper' Double IPA. Maybe it was just I had already drunk a fair bit of beer during the day, but there was not a great amount of hoppiness of bitterness coming from the beer. It is probably one of the easiest drinking DIPAs I have ever had, so not sure if it has hit the mark. Hey, if I find it pretty low on hops, I can't imagine what a beer drinking that appreciate hops more than I would think.

On that, I get back to my relaxing Sunday, including reading more of a book on bogans (no, not my ancesters, but the Australia subcultural entity that is the 'bogan'. There are some hilarious aspects that come up with regard to a 'bogans' relationship with beer that I will have to share sometime.

Cheers,

Beefy

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