For this week’s brew we’re bringing the mash tun over to Peter’s place to make a mess of his kitchen and give a break to Shean’s house (his kitchen walls have been bleeding beer). We are making our version of a Baltic Porter, and as you may remember, we reviewed the Garrison Baltic Porter last week. We are going for a high alcohol, slightly sweet beer with lots of malt flavours.
Munich malt is being used as the base malt instead of a pale or pilsner 2-row malt. Munich malt imparts more colour and flavour than the other base malts but still has diastatic power (enough enzymes for converting starch to sugar) to be used as the main malt in a recipe.
Recipe:
7.5 kg Munich malt
1.0 kg Amber malt
0.5 kg Crystal 120 malt
0.05 kg Black Patent malt
Mashed at 153 F for 60 minutes
Sparge at 164 F for 15 minutes
40 g Tettnang at 60 minutes
60 g Saaz at 30 minutes
2 packages of hydrated Saflager yeast
Let’s get this mashed!
So I guess this needs to sit for an hour so… LETS EAT BURGERS!
Peter lives a block away from Gus’ Pub (we lived our 20’s there) and last year the Brooklyn Warehouse folks started, what many would consider to be, the best burger joint in town. In the back of our local watering hole, these fine meat loving locals spit out some of the finest cow you can find in HRM. The menu changes just enough, they keep it simple and you can buy a pint of Bridge Brewing’s special beer for the pub.
We’ve both been really busy so we are too busy eating and catching up to bother reviewing the beer or the food. Bridge make some of our favourite local beers, and Ace is Ace.
When we get back to Peter’s we collect the wort. The first runnings smell amazing and are very dark.
First review beer of the night:
Denison’s Weissbier
This beer pours light, slightly golden but little lacing. It is has a cloudy straw colour with orange tints. Slight Clove with some bubblegum on the nose. The head quickly dissipates with some foam lingering around edge of our glasses. Shean thinks he almost tastes a spice on his tongue, but he’s not convinced of spice. We pick out a strong bite from the heavy carbonation. That spiciness seems to be mostly coming from the carbonation level combined with minimal clove.
Les Trois Mousquetaires Alt Sticke
First thing we get on the nose are fruity esters. Famously from Düsseldorf, Germany, this Quebec version of the style is woody, vegetal and sweet to taste. Nice maltiness. Dark, red brown in appearance. Lingering bitter on back of the tongue. After a few samples, an earthiness is there that has more of the woody notes as well. Bark. Bark.
Between all this beer sampling we finished collecting the wort, got the wort up to a boil and added our bittering hops, the 40 g of Tettnang.
Unibroue Fin du Mond
Citrus and Belgian yeast characteristics are apparent on the nose. More of these flavours as we taste. Murky blonde. Sweetness in the beginning. A tartness in the finish. A little hint of dried fruit. Shean found the finish a bit unpleasant while Peter enjoyed it. A fist fight was avoided by agreeing to disagree on this.
Anchor Old Foghorn
A thin head forms on this strong ale. A little hop flavour. Booze barely cuts through the sweetness inherent in this brown brew. Warming from the alcohol. Sweetness is coating our mouth. Caramel candy notes.
Boxing Rock Vicar’s Cross DIPA is our last beer of the night. We’ve had this as a night cap on another brew night and both of us pick up a bottle or two regularly when we want a delicious and hoppy beer. We are not reviewing this one. All we want to do is make the point that we really love this beer!
(Beware early reviews of this beer as it took several batches for Boxing Rock to get this one dialed in).
So after adding the Saaz hops at the 30 minute mark and finishing off the boil, we cool the wort and get it into a glass carboy with a blow off tube. SINGLE STAGE FTW!
The starting gravity is 1.084 which is exactly what we had planned (again we don’t know how this keeps happening) although we ended up with some extra wort.
We’ll be taking a brewing hiatus over the holidays, but we’ll be hitting a party very soon where we’ll be tasting the Like a Motorcycle beers (see previous double brew post) and reporting on how things went.
Buy some local beer this Xmas.
http://atlanticcanadabeerblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/atlantic-canadian-beer-blogs-holiday-buyers-guide-2013/
Happy Holidays, and once again…
Cheers from Mashed in Hfx!
Mashed In Hfx 