Matt's Blog

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Bottled my clean-out-the-cupboard brew last night. The recipe is given below. I basically took inventory of what I had, pulled everything out for the mead and summer brew that I plan to make, gathered the remaining ingredients, and went to brewing. This was about three weeks ago. When I took a sip during bottling I initially thought, "Eww, did something go wrong?" I wasn't excited about tossing out five gallons of beer. I tried another taste and figured out I was just surprised by the strong taste hops in the beer. My hops, the hops I grew in my own back yard, the hops I threw into the wort during the last couple minutes of boil just so I could taste them. I'd been drinking farm stout and cider for so long that I think I forgot what hops tasted like. Oh, and they taste delicious.

So I ended up with what I think will be a nice American brown ale. I ran out of bottles during bottling, so I put what was left into a plastic pitcher. Hmmmm. I think I'll go home and finish it off now. Can't wait for the bottle conditioning to wrap up in a week or two.

Follow up:

2 oz crystal malt 40L
1 # cara munic 40-54L

brewed at ~150 for 30-45 min

Iron Master Northern Brown kit
~2 # light dry malt extract

boiled 30 min

1 oz cascase hops - boiled last 20 min

1/2 cup honey - boiled last 10 min

1/2 oz fuggle + my homegrown hops (1/4 - 1/2 oz?) - boiled last 3 min