“Roasty”, “chocolate”, “coffee-like”, “dark”, “intense”, “cocoa”, “expresso”, “buscuity”, “vanilla”, “mocha”, “dark fruit”, “sweet”, “dry”, “creamy”, and “like an ash tray”. All of these are terms that were used by BJCP judges to describe my entries into the 2012 Three Rivers Alliance of Serious Homebrewers (aka TRASH 22) competition. As one might imagine, only one of these terms kept repeating over and over and over in my head... “like an ash tray”. What the fuck.

My most recent homebrew has aged enough that I'm ready to give it an official review.

Pours jet black with some particulate haze, brown sugar head about a quarter inch, retains as a film pretty well.

Smells of rich chocolate, oat malt and a hint of bourbon.

Tastes like chocolate syrup with some brown sugar sweetness, roasted barley malt and a bit of papery bitterness.

Some detailed notes on my two homebrews.

Finally got over the hump... I finally MASHED. After nearly a year of researching and figuring, I went a head and built a mash tun out of my picnic cooler. It only took $40 in brass and stainless fittings and about eight trips to Lowe's to finally get it right. I forced myself to build it when I went in on a bulk grain buy with some other local home brewers. So build it, or be stuck with four 55 lbs sacks of grain. I might go further into detail on how to build a mash tun in a later post, but let me get back to the pale ale.

So I bottled my homebrew witbier last Friday night. I discussed the recipe in an earlier post, but basically with was a mix of light and wheat DME and honey, some coriander and orange peel steeped, a trappist yeast and a 13 day primary. It got very hot recently without warning and I didn't bother to run the AC, so it's entirely possible that I brewed a bit hot. Anyway, the product at bottling time was an astounding 7.5 abv (I was shooting for about 4.5), so I guess that teaches me my lesson about the trappist yeast. The smells were very citrusy and also some bananas.

This weekend I‘ll be starting a batch of witbier. I pulled this recipe off an online recipe forum and modified it slightly to accommodate my tastes and the ingredients available to me. The goal is to create something low in abv, easily sessionable, not necessarily groundbreaking but just ideal for throwing back on the beach in the hot sun…which is exactly where I hope to be taking this.