Anyway, with Summer 2009 a bust, we look forward pleadingly towards Autumn to right the wrongs Nature has smacked us with. As previously mentioned, I am planning a nice pumpkin spice ale and a porter with the star anise I picked up a few months ago. A couple of questions for discussion and debate -

1. Pumpkin ale - with or without real pumpkin?
2. Star anise in a rich chocolate porter - yay or nay?
3. Have you ever used cardamom in beer? It goes well with tea…
4. Can I somehow work my avocado fetish into one of these beers?

Also, let me know what you have cooking for the Fall and holiday seasons!

There are already a few brewing apps I’ve seen out there - Joshua Baran created a BJCP Style Guidelines app which is great - searchable, elegant, and free! Also, “nurl” has produced a gem of a brewing app called Brew Pal - this is a steal at $0.99. It is really full-featured, well-supported, and is a lot of fun to use on brewdays. In addition to those two apps (which I own), there are a handful of other offerings out there.

My question to the masses - what kind of brewing/beer apps would YOU like to see? Some brewing calculator or utility app? A beer/bar/brewery related app? Ingredient inventory app? I have a couple of ideas in mind, but I’m curious to see if there is a pressing need out there I could address. Email/comment me with your ideas - if I actually develop it and it hits market, I’ll make sure you get credit for the idea and a free copy of the finished program.

I’ve got one Witbier planned (didn’t get to it this weekend), along with the 5 gallons of my banana wheat beer (which is aging nicely, with the banana becoming a muted tone instead of an attention hog). Then what? Maybe a lager - I’ve had Kölsch on the mind for awhile. Anyone have a good recipe?

I hope to use the long holiday weekend to throw together a wit beer. I found some huge bags of coriander in an Indian market - a lot cheaper than the small packs they sell at the homebrew store, but I wonder if they are the same quality. Does anyone know if coriander quality is pretty standard, or am I taking a big risk using this bulk source?

Finally, an update on the “banana brew”, the wheat beer that fermented a bit warm and had a strong banana flavor and aroma. The beer has been cold conditioning in the chest freezer for the last few weeks, and it has become quite pleasant! The banana flavor has faded a bit - I can drink it quite easily, but it still has a bit too much of that Hefeweizen quality for BeerGirl to drink. Oh well, looks like I’ll have to polish off all five gallons by myself!

I kegged up the summer wheat beer I brewed up a few weeks ago, and I knew I had a problem as soon as I opened the fermentor and the rich smell of ripe bananas washed over me. My first thought was some sort of infection - I had used Wyeast’s 3333 - German Wheat and expected a nice, clean flavor like an American Wheat (my first yeast choice, which the homebrew shop was out of). However, a little reseach led me to the fact that 3333 can indeed throw out banana esters when fermented a little on the high end of the temperature range. I had fermented this in the kitchen and the ambient temperature probably ranged from 65-75°F. Here is where laziness came back to haunt me - I have a fermenting refrigerator and forgot how important a cool fermentation is for a clean tasting wheat. I should’ve used the fridge and had this beer fermenting in the very low sixties.

Anyway, what’s done is done, and I now have an interesting brew on my hands. There is a definite banana flavor and aroma there - mixed with the citrus notes from the grains of paradise, the flavor reminds me of those Tropicana orange/banana fruit juice blends. The base reminds me a bit of Sam Adams’ Summer, which is sort of what I was aiming for, but the banana really throws it off. It isn’t fully carbonated yet - adding even a touch of carbonation helped the beer even out quite a bit, and I’m hoping some cold conditioning and proper carbonation might save it in the end. It is definitely drinkable at this early stage, but it is certainly not my best work, and a problem which could have been easily avoided. Maybe it will wind up drinking like a slightly weird Hefeweizen - I’m crossing my fingers.

I was hoping this would be my first competition beer - I might enter it just to see what the judges make of the flavor, but I’m not bringing home any Best of Shows with this one…

Blichmann’s BeerGun

Are any of you using this beast? It’s supposed to be the pinnacle of draft-to-bottle technology.

For those unfamiliar with the issues of going from keg to bottle, beer will foam when exposed to rapid pressure changes - this makes filling bottles from a pressurized keg difficult. The only real solution used to be counter-pressure bottle fillers, which are unwieldy contraptions that pressurize the bottle and allow you to fill it without the beer foaming all over the place. The BeerGun is supposed to be a much more elegant solution, gradually reducing the pressure of the beer and allowing for one-person operation.

It should be here in a couple of days, and I’ll be sure to post a full review once I get a chance to use it. I’ve already missed the NY State Fair competition deadline, so I’ll have to check the AHA/BJCP calendar and see what my next target is.

Appearance: The beers look nearly identical - a rich copper color with a thick head that sticks around awhile but vanishes with no lacing. If anything, ORH was a touch darker, which makes sense since it was a partial boil extract brew. Winner: Tie

Aroma: Upon pouring, OSH greeted me with a skunky odor - perhaps due to the long distance the beer traveled and the clear bottle (why?!?) it came in. The skunkiness dissipated a bit and gave way to an aroma that reminded me of iced tea. ORH had a much more appealing aroma - no skunkiness, and a slightly sweet, fruity note hanging very discreetly in the background. For some reason, it reminded me of those orange candy circus peanuts that taste like bananas. That’s a horrible description, since you will conjure up all kinds of negative connotations, but I assure you, it was a pleasant and very subtle scent that enticed you to take a sip. Winner: Reckless

Mouthfeel: Both beers drink very nicely. Moderate carbonation with a soft feel on the tongue. They both finish clean on the palate, with no syrupy residue and a pleasant bitterness on the tail end. However, the bitterness in the OSH was a bit more refined and less harsh than ORH. Points go to Speckled here, but I’d like to point out that Reckless is only three weeks old and that harsh bite will mellow nicely. Do I hear rematch? Winner: Speckled

Flavor: OK, so here’s what really matters. Both beers are tasty, with nice malty backgrounds. However, with OSH I pick up an almost lemony flavor - a brightness that’s not quite unpleasant, but seems a touch out of place. Combined with the iced tea aroma, I feel like I’m drinking a spiked Lipton’s at times. This effect was accentuated as the carbonation faded and the beer flattened out. The ORH has a chewier, more complex taste - next to the malt, there are some delicate notes of…what, exactly? Almost fruity, but it disappears too quickly to pin it down. I like both of these beers, but I’m going to give the points to Reckless, simply due to the slightly fuller & more complex taste. Winner: Reckless

Overall: Well, there you have it - Reckless wins by a nose. However, we have to consider the fact that one beer is fresh and on draft while the other has been shipped halfway around the world in a clear bottle. Maltose’s kit came very close to the original, and some of those evasive fruity notes might be due to the two yeast packs that got pitched on brewday. I’ll take the victory, although I think Old Speckled Hen would taste much better in an English pub and Old Reckless Hen needs to mature and mellow out a bit more. If anything, the reckless brew experiment should prove to new homebrewers everywhere - relax! You WILL make beer, and chances are it will be pretty good!

I needed to get ready to keg the Old Speckled Hen clone I brewed up a couple of weeks ago. I had some kegs from last summer sitting in the chest freezer - an almost-kicked boysenberry wheat and a few gallons of my RyePA (Pale Ryeder). It had been almost a full year since I had tasted either of these beers, and I was expecting them to be long past spoiled.

I tasted the Pale Ryder first, figuring it would have held up better against the ravages of time. Indeed, the beer tasted fine - great, even. Perfect carbonation level, good balance, just a touch of that heavy, almost syrupy mouthfeel found in Imperial IPAs. I enjoyed a quick sample and turned to the other keg…the wheat beer. There was no way this beer was still good. I braced myself for the unpleasant task of cleaning out the keg and dragged it outside.

I dispensed a little beer and sniffed it. It smelled OK. Ah, you only live once, right? I gave it a taste…and it was delicious!! I immediately dispensed the remainder of the keg into a pitcher, shocked that the beer had held up so well. I see it as a sign my sanitation and racking procedures are OK. What’s the longest you guys have kept a beer in a keg?

In other corny news, I kegged the Old Reckless Hen tonight, and it tasted pretty good out of the primary - can’t wait to try it with some carbonation. I’m going to enter the Old Reckless Hen, the new wheat beer that’s almost ready, and, why not, some Pale Ryder to the NY State Fair. This will be my first competition, so I’m excited to see what kind of feedback I get. I’ll let you know!