Brews update

Brew#2: I tasted the Jamaica Me Crazy Nut Brown and its sweet, nutty, has some coffee flavor, and overall pretty similar to the coffee. I need to let it age a bit I think to see how it changes in character, I can only expect it will mellow some and if so it will be a really good beer. With that in mind I bottled all of it instead of half kegging. The FG was 1.012, bringing the alc % to about 7.4% wowzers. It also had great clarity. This should be a great and very tasty beer.

Brew#3: I slapped The Dupont Special into the secondary, and measured the SG in process which measured out to 1.010 so its already low and pretty much ready. With the added honey it was brought up to 1.036 so this should have some alcohol, as well as be pretty light and tasty. I quickly tasted it and it had some of the bavarian hefe taste, but still needs some time. It was a little darker and heavier in taste than expected so we shall see how the secondary treats it.

Brew#1: Did another taste of this and its mellowed out a lot. It has some great qualities now. Its seems very similar to the style of Lagunitas IPA, with a great malt bed and lots of noble bittering hops, but not much on the floral, spicey, or citrus hops. It has plenty of Centennial on the nose and little taste, lots of Warrior on the taste, lots of crystal malt taste, a touch of alcohol in the mouth, its got a thick mouth feel to go with it, and its got a great flavor. Aging should only make it better. Just by how well this is coming out already I am very happy with how out brewing process is coming along.

The Dupont Special

The Dupont Special was a Bavarian Hefe. The brew process went well except that I added too much water to the boil and ended up with a low gravity and had to add a couple growlers to hold the extra. Also did a cold break in the mash and if it affected much it seemed to be worse since the gravity was so low. I will hold off on the cold break for now. I adjusted the recipe for a 6gal batch and ended up with an expected OG of 1.036 and we ended with 1.030. I added a lb of honey to the primary and that should stabilize the gravity. It should have jumped about .006 to the grav putting our original gravity at 1.036. It was meant to be a very light beer anyways due to the projected customer for this brew.

FYI, I'm thinking of adding rendered bacon fat to a growler after its done fermenting and see how it adds to the beer. That will be an interesting experiment.