Big Evening

Lots of brewing activity tonight.

First, I went to the homebrew store on my way home from work and picked up 18 lbs of Maris Otter malt to make my Wee Heavy this weekend. Apparently, they have refurbished their grain mill so that it actually provides a decent crush now; reviewing a sample of the crushed malt seemed to bear this out. I also picked up two used corny kegs, because I now dread bottling.

When I got home, I cleaned up my new kegs and kegged my batches which were in secondary: Red Nose Amber and Northwest Not-So-Imperial IPA. They both tasted rather good; Red Nose is not terribly amber, but has an interesting apple flavor along with the bright, citrusy hops (this is probably due to the sugar I added). Its color tracks more with a pale ale, but it is reddish; perhaps I can call it a pale amber. Not-So-Imperial has a great layered hop flavor with the bright Cascades competing for the spotlight with the earthy and subtle Willamettes. Overall, it's a great effect.

I then racked Blackacre American Stout and Ol' Smokey to secondaries and harvested the yeast cake from Ol' Smokey to use with my Wee Heavy. The stout is balanced and somewhat earthy due to the Willamettes (which I'm growing to like quite a lot) and I think it will be a good beer when it is all done. Ol' Smokey basically tastes like someone threw a shot of Islay Scotch whiskey into a growler full of basic porter. Just the effect I wanted!

All in all, a great brewery maintenance day.