A question of taste

Well folks, we're very nearly out of our Mr. Beer ingredients and I'm looking at taking the next step to partial mashing.

Most kinds of beer can be brewed with base malt extract and steeping a small amount of "specialty grains," which are various toasted, roasted, or caramelized grains that will add greater taste, complexity and freshness to the beer.

I'm considering trying a California Common ("Steam") beer for my first partial mash.

I love the taste of this beer on draft. Out of the bottle is very good, too, but the hop bitterness is more apparent.

So what do you say, tasting community? A steam beer, or something else?

Frickin S'Wheat

This weekend we opened the first couple bottles of our Spiced Wheat.
















As you can see, it has a nice, deep amber color. The low head retention was my fault: I poured a little too gently down the side of the glass.

Taste-wise, it's silky smooth with none of the tartness you find in a lot of wheat beer. The sweetness of the malt balances pretty well with the minimal Liberty hop bitterness, and spice from the orange zest, cloves and coriander.

We took a six-pack to a party and people seemed to really like it. I predict this batch won't last very long.

Also bottled my Weizenbock on Sunday. I am officially done adding sugar to bottles. It's a pain in the ass and not worth the potential to introduce bad nasties to the beer. Going to order a bunch of PrimeTabs, which are compressed, sanitized corn sugar cubes. That is, unless my wife will let me start kegging. What do you think, honey?

Beer update

A list of what's going on, beer-wise:

My Spiced Wheat Beer will be ready to drink this weekend. Cloves, coriander, orange zest and Liberty Hop pellets went into the boil, and tastes out of the fermentor have been very promising. Anticipating something similar to a Leinie's Sunset Wheat or maybe a Hoegaarden.

Also this weekend, my Weizenbock (Dark Wheat) should be ready to bottle. This will be my hoppiest beer to date, as the extract I used was pre-hopped and I added the balance of my Liberty Hops as well.

The Sweet Chile O' Mine (green chili ale) will need another week in the main fermentor. Our airlock hasn't been bubbling like I expected, but I held up a flashlight to the outside of the fermentor and there is definitely a decent kreusen on top, so we shall see.

Double the fermentors, double the fun.

This weekend, my wife and I constructed a second fermentor. We are going to continue using the Mr. Beer "keg" fermentor, and we made a more traditional bucket/airlock/spigot for the second one.

Lots of jags on homebrew forums like to make fun of Mr. Beer, but if space is at a premium, you can't beat a fermentor that can fit on a bookshelf.

Our second fermentor is also very manageable. We decided to use a bucket that will accomodate the same 2.5 gallon size batch as the Mr. Beer. This way, we can have different batches going, split up a full 5 gallon recipe, or use one as a primary and one as a secondary (common with making lagers).