Whiskey Barrel Stout. Yummm!

I cracked open my first bottle of Whiskey Barrel Stout and it is yummy.  Of course I am drinking this within an hour of leaving the dentist office from a deep cleaning and my lower right mouth is still numb, but what I am tasting right now tastes really good.

The whiskey flavor is definitely there but it is not so strong to overpower the typical beer flavor that one would expect from a Stout.  Of course you taste with your nose before with your mouth and the whiskey aroma coming off this beer is really nice too.  Over all I really like the way this beer has turned out and I expect I will be trying to brew another batch of this in the future.

As you can see from the picture this is a dark beer.  I would put the IBU's rating around a 20 or so I think, it is not very bitter at all.

P.S.  I am a bit of an indoor garden fan too and those are all bonsai in the back ground.

Bottling Day, Whiskey Barrel Stout.

After 4 weeks in ferment I finally got around to bottling my batch of whiskey barrel stout Monday morning.  There was an interesting cloudy film over the top of the beer when I opened up the bucket to prime the beer; I wish I had taken of picture of it so that I could actually show what it looked like.  I have never used oak barrel chips so I am hoping that this is okay.  I have also never let a brew sit in a bucket that long before, nor have I ever exposed a brew to temperatures like we have been having. I tried a small swig of the brew before I started pouring it in to bottles and thought it had an amazing taste, even warm and flat I kind of liked the little bit of flavor that I was getting.  The whiskey smell was surprisingly strong and in fact there is still a hint of that smell around, I have not yet thoroughly cleaned the bucket. 

I have also upgraded to 22 oz. bottles.  I love making beer, but I hate cleaning bottles.  So by going to 22 oz bottles from 12 oz bottles I have almost halved the number of bottles that I need for bottling and CLEANING!!!!!!!!

I am also pretty happy that 24 bottles takes up less space then 48 bottles.

I will be cracking in to one of these maybe this Saturday, so I will be updating when I know what they taste like.  I have an extended family get-together happening at the end of the month and if this beer doesn't kill, or make me sick before then I will introduce my family to this one at the end of the month.

I also recently bought the first of two 6.5 gallon glass carboys that I need to attempt hard cider this fall.  Any good recipes for that?

Catching up the blog

In an effort to make this thing a little bit more fun for me and more interesting for anyone that would happen to stumble across this blog I bought a new Nikon to start adding pictures.

June 24 I went with my sister to Chicago for the annual Gay Pride Parade, one of the original gay pride festivals in the country.

I don't know this ladies name but this is the second year in a row that I have spend Chicago Gay Pride with her and her group.  They are really nice, funny, and a blast to be around.  See even let my sister use her chair for a while and keep some of our Gatorade cool in her cooler.

Went to South Haven Michigan, a resort town on Lake Michigan for the 4th of July.  You can't tell it but just to my right the beach was packed.  I even witnessed two fights that had to be broken up by the police.

Since I am putting pictures of total strangers up here I guess one of me couldn't hurt.  This was totally an accidental shot of me while I was working out how to use this new Nikon, but what ever I am naturally ugly and this one doesn't look half bad.

South West Michigan, Beer Capitol.

I recently, about 2 weeks ago, tried two different Founders Brew's that were on tap at my most frequented local bar.  Both brews were good although neither were for the commercial beer drinker.  The first was amazing for its ability to reveal flavor in layers.  I might have the name wrong but I believe it was called Dirty Bastard.  It had a strong initial malt flavor that had hints for chocolate and coffee malt.  As the malt gave way you tasted the initial hop flavors and as the beer finally washed past the back of your tongue there was a definite final note of Cascade Hops, those being the only hops I can currently ID by taste.  The other Founders brew I tried I am even less sure of the name, but based on what I know about the beer and the descriptions on their website, www.foundersbrewing.com, it was probably Curmudgeon Old Ale.  This beer is aged in oak barrels to give it a hint of Scotch flavor.  I was totally in to this beer.  While it wasn't as complex as the Dirty Bastard it was smooth and would probably be more palatable to wider range of beer drinkers.  I would say they were good beers, but not beers that would make my top ten favorites.  (Two of my top ten favorites are beers that I make.)
Founders is based in Grand Rapids MI.......
 BUT......

In Kalamazoo MI, there is a beer renaissance going on.  Bell's brewery, by far the largest brewery in Michigan, keeps building up and getting stronger it would seem.  The have been more and more capable of bringing live music and entertainment to their Tap House in downtown Kalamazoo, acts such as The Verve Pipe and Dark Star Orchestra to name a few of the recent bands.  http://www.mlive.com/kalamabrew/index.ssf/2010/04/kalamazoos_bells_brewery_inc_r_1.html

In the local news, however, there are two new breweries expecting to open up shop in Kalamazoo, one of them stating they expect to be open by this fall.  Arcadia Brewing, so named for the Arcadia Creek that runs through downtown Kalamazoo, announced they would build a second tap house on on the edge of the downtown area right next to the Kalamazoo River.  (Kings Highway and Michigan) Here is the news link to this story.  http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/06/arcadia_brewing_co_1.html

Another brewery, Boatyard Brewery, is set to come to Kalamazoo and hopes to be open this fall.  This one is a totally new brewery, we will have to see what their beer offerings are when it happens.  Here is the news link to their story.  http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/06/kalamazoo_to_get_new_brewery_b.html

Racking the whiskey beer

Holy Shit ya'll, that smelled amazing.  I transferred my beer to the secondary fermenter and added the oak barrel chips to the secondary fermenter.  The oak barrel chips have to be boiled in a small amount of water for about 5 minutes before being added, and man did that smell good.  My entire apartment smelled amazing. 

Upon checking the beer when I openned up the first fermenter it definately did have a much more vigorus fermentation than what I usually see.  The specific gravity reading was a waste of time for me because I totally forgot what its initial reading was and never wrote it down.

I am going to let the whole thing sit for another 3 weeks, the longer it sits the stronger the whiskey flavor will be, before bottelling.

The in kit instructions kept using the word Racking or Rack in reference to this step in thebrewing process and even though this is my 20th gallon of home brew so far this year and probably almost my 100th gallon over all, I still had no idea what Racking meant.  So I looked it up in The Joy Of Home Brewing.  Racking is nothing more then the process of transferring beer from one container to another.  It seems kind of stupid that, that process has it own name but for how often, no less than 3 times per brew, that is done I guess it makes sense to condense that idea down to one word.  I still don't understand why the word is Racking when Pouring, or heaven forbid Transfering would have been just as good a word and made more sense.

Woodchuck love!!!

Hard Cider is amazing and the only commercially availible brand is Woodchuck.  I have been a fan of Woodchuck Amber since before I considered my self a beer drinker.  I love the taste.  I love even more that they are explanding the flavors offered to more then just Amber. 

While I still like their Granny Smith flavor it is not a favorite.  I, just this weekend, tried Crisp for the first time as I went out to Clevland OH for a Dave Matthews Band concert.  I have got to say I loved it, but I drank 4 bottles out of a six pack along with like 5 cans of Lienehugle's Summer Shandy and didn't even get a buzz.  (The lack of any kind of buzz was even more upsetting when you consider that I had not eaten much of anything up to the point I was drinking and tailgating in the parking field before the concert.)

So I loved the flavor of Woodchuck Crisp, but I would recommend to anyone to mix it with a shot of vodka or you will never get there.  (There being drunk.)

As for my own desire to make hard cider.  I still need to buy two glass carboy's that are up to the challenge.  I also have 4 months still to go before fresh apple cider really becomes availible.  There is an apple cider mill about 7 miles away from my apartment.

 

From Blossom Music Center Chuyhoga Falls OH last night

Would you like to be cut, ripped, or put on a better gun show then Charlton Heston

So I am not going to hide it anymore.  I am fat.

I want to get in shape but everything in men's fitness anymore is about getting ripped, or cut, or developing guns.  Why isn't there just a men's fitness program for losing 30 pounds and being healthier.  I know that is probably a super gay way of looking at it, cause no straight guy really obsesses, outwardly, about just wanting to lose weight. 

But these damn macho guys are screwing up with the fitness scene for the rest of us sensible guys that just want to be healthier.  We don't all want our veins to be popping out of our arms and it really turns me off to the fitness programs that promote themselves like that.  Why isn't there something sensible, cheap, and easy to follow that we can follow that just makes the to lose weight and bring your physical fitness level in to balance.