May 9, 2009

News on the Beer Front

While my personal consumption of beer has tapered a bit recently due to a calculating effort to lose some weight, there is still plenty of beer action to be had in Springfield. Predominantly my focus has been on my homebrewing efforts and the Prairie Schooners Homebrew Club.

Recently we held a group brew as a part the the National Big Brew which featured homebrew clubs around the nation brewing one of three styles as a celebration of American homebrewing. I brewed a Dark Mild Ale which happil bubbled away and is due to be racked to a secondary to settle for another week with, hopefully, bottling to follow next weeked.

My recipe was:

1/2 lb Chocolate malt steeped at 170 for 15 minutes
Brought to a boil for 60 minutes
1 oz of Kent Golding hops added for bittering at 60 minutes
4 lbs of Light Dry Malt Extract added at 15 minutes
Danstar Windsor yeast
This was fermented at 68 to 70 deg Farenheit

The dark mild will clock in at around 120 calories and after the debacle that my 3lb malt recipe became should hopefully be good. I have had a string of bad batches that I hope to chalk up to too high of fermentation temps. The Tornado Ale had a bubblegum nose and flavor whoch is not on my ideal list of Pale Ale flavors. The 3 lb Malt Ale is downright unpleasant and may have a host of issues in addition to fermeting in the 74 to 80 degree range. That little of malt also woudn't have been able to hide many off flavors so I was asking for trouble from the get-go. 'll keep trying it just to see if anything changes but I am not hopeful. Moving on is probably the best solution for me.

Next up on the beer agenda is: Prairie Schooners Homebrew Club meeting this Thursday at The Brewhaus.