This is a recap of the beers brewed this year, their results, and a few lessons learned. This will be just as much for my documentation as well as your enjoyment. If you want a recipe or beersmith file, don't hesitate to ask.
Backstory - I have wanted to get into homebrewing for quite some time, but storage space and time were big issues. I had borrowed/perused many BYO magazines from my co-worker James, and heard some very interesting homebrew tales from another co-worker, Sam. The fan finally hit the shit when my buddy Craig T. showed me his one gallon femto-brewery in his apartment outside of Boston. I came home determined to do a few one-gallon batches but my homebrewer friends in Raleigh talked my into the 3 gallon brew-in-a-bag method. After my first batch, the shit-fan was turned up to high.
Coffee Stout - This was a great way to start my homebrewing adventure since dark beer seems to be very forgiving. Any mistakes I made here were well covered up by the coffee and the dark roasty malts. I added an entire french press full of cold brewed Whole Foods - Christmas Blend coffee at bottling, but I was in a rush to make the coffee and I might have added the water to the grinds before it had completely cooled. The result was great, but the coffee flavors were very prominent. I didn't have a scale at this point, so my hop additions and priming sugar was mostly guess work.
Smoked Black IPA - My goal with this recipe was to recreate a beer I had on vacation in Portland, Maine. Rising Tide - Atlantis is such an amazing beer. I first had a Rising Tide beer with my friend and fellow "femto-brewer", Craig, at a quaint little pub in Waltham, Mass called The Gaff. My beer turned out nothing like Atlantis. My brew was overwhelmed with dark malts that masked the hop and smokey notes I wanted. However, the result, more of a lightly smoked porter, proved to be quite quaffable and I enjoyed every last bottle. My first batch next year will be an updated version of this brew. I will trade the english hop varieties for american hops and up the smoked malt to 50% of the grain bill.
Sasion #1 - By far this was the best beer I made this year. It was VERY simple recipe and used a french saision yeast and french hops. After about a month in the bottle, this brew came out clear, refreshing, well carb'ed, and with an amazing belgian yeast flavor that almost any beer drinker could enjoy. I can't wait to make this again next year.
Saison #2 - I re-used the yeast from Saison #1, increased the hops, and increased the gain quantity to come up with a ~10% saison. Again, this beer came out so wonderfully, but it really needed several months in the bottle to condition. I would leave this in the bottle for 3 months or so before trying it. Also, it took about 6 weeks to fully carb up.
Berliner Weisse - I found out about this beer from a Draft Magazine article I read over the summer. I do enjoy a good sour beer so I thought I would give this style a shot. This was a very simple low OG recipe that used a lacto for a few days before pitching a US-05 packet. I aged my four gallon batch for two months before bottling. This turned out clean and crisp but not as sour as I had hoped. Next time I will let the lacto run its course completely before pitching any other yeast, and probably add some more yeast right before bottling. After two months in the primary, my yeasties were about dead and some bottles had a difficult time carbonating.
NZ IPA - I have been slightly obsessed with New Zealand since my friend Aaron set off after college to enjoy a year traveling around those two tiny islands. This was many years before The Lion, the Witch, and the Hobbits even made it to the multi-plex. I haven't even seen the movie. ~ This beer was probably my biggest disappointment this year. My scale had broken the night before brew day so I couldn't measure out my hops, of which I did not have enough. The NZ hop presence was there but just not enough of it. James and I tasted it side by side with Green flash - Green Bullet, and the flavor was spot on. It was also over-carbonated and I had many bottles foam out after opening the cap.
Molasses Pecan Porter - This was a good experiment! I made a standard american stout and added a LOT of roasted pecans to the mash and again in the boil. I also added about a quarter of a cup of molasses during the boil. The results: good stout, the oil from the nuts prevented a good head from forming, hardly any taste at all from the molasses or the pecans.
Substation Stout - This beer was the result of James, Sam, and I each brewing a two gallon batch and combining them to ferment in James' temperature controlled fridge. This beast will be ready to quaff in December, so look out for a full blown review then. It was based off of the Kate the Great RIS that seems to be very popular. This is a 15% abv russian imperial stout.
Graff Cider - I decided to make this after reading a lot about it over on the homebrewtalk forums. It seems like a tasty beverage, so expect a full blown review here in a couple of weeks. The Graff was super easy to brew, and it tasted great just a couple of weeks after bottling. I will definitely be making another batch of this again next year perhaps with some Trader Joe's juice.
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