Brew Day & Taating Notes: North Shore Brewers Q4 2024 Sweet Stout

Brew Day: Curly's Milk Stout

As the blog closes in on its one year anniversary, this is a first. This is the first beer I brewed for the site that I am rebrewing.

Beautiful dark wort color.

As my flagship beer, I need to have some Curly's Milk Stout on hand at all times. My original brew day was last November and I am down to my last dozen or so bottles. The nice thing about a balanced stout as opposed to an IPA or hoppy pale ale is that the beer keeps relatively well as hop aroma and hop flavor are the first things to go in a beer. If you buy a six month old bottle of Peeper at a bottle shop, then find Peeper served fresh on draught, it is a completely different experience.

Brew Day: Curly's Milk Stout

About a year ago my home was overwhelmed with beer. Brewing one or two five gallon batches every month, and then buying the latest and greatest commercial beers can certainly add up quickly. That is when I started brewing one and two gallon batches, which also enabled me to brew all-grain BIAB batches on my stove-top.

The beer looks gorgeous already.

The main downside to small-batch brewing is that if the beer turns out to be excellent, and you only brew a one gallon batch, you only have eight 12oz bottles of this excellent beer that took the same amount of work as a larger batch. This is exactly what happened with my first small batch brew.

Brew Day: Curly’s Pumpkin Milk Stout

I gave up on being trendy a long time ago. When I was 14 I realized I would never be cool, and socially only aspired to be left alone most of the time. At 34, I find being purposely uncool kind of amusing. Case in point, I refused to use emojis until very recently. Now that everybody uses them, I try to use them as obnoxiously as possible. When Jennie asks if I want Chipotle for dinner, I might respond with several thumbs up emojis, several burrito emojis, and several eggplant emojis. To wit, when I suggested a Pumpkin Milk Stout, Jennie’s response was “pumpkin spice is so 2014″. At that point she may as well have put the squirt gun emoji to my head. I had to brew this!

To Jennie’s point, the sales of pumpkin beer are down substantially. The market finally reached a point of saturation last year.



My last batch of Curly’s Milk Stout was a dud. There was something off about the flavor. I entered it into a competition where it scored quite poorly. The judges remarked that the beer was phenolic. My guess is that the batch was infected. I still haven’t tasted the coffee or chocolate variants from that batch.

After taking 2015 off from pumpkin beer and the hassle involved with brewing with fresh pumpkin it is time to brew one again fall. There are commercially available pumpkin milk stouts out there, but it is not nearly as ubiquitous as the lightly hopped amber pumplin ales that are everywhere.

The first thing I did was revisit the recipe for Curly’s Milk Stout that would be the base beer. Each batch has been slightly different than the last as I sought to perfect the beer. Recently I drank the last bottle from the original one-gallon batch as part of a vertical of all of the batches of Curly that I have brewed. At the end Jennie and I both agreed that the first batch was the best batch.

With beer and with life it is easy to be carried away with trying to improve things. After too many small improvements, it is easy to lose your way. Sometimes when something is lacking or deficient, it is better to just start over with a clean slate which is exactly what I did.



Curly’s Milk Stout was always an amalgam of English and American ingredients. The first thing I decided was I wanted all of the ingredients to be American. I replaced the English Fuggle with American Willamette hops. I simplified what had become an overly complicated grist: clean American 2-row barley as the base, Caramel 40 for body and a medium caramel flavor to compliment the sweetness from the lactose, Chocolate Malt for a light roasted character, and a small addition de-husked Blackprinz malt for color without adding an excessive roasted flavor.

For my yeast I didn’t want anything too floral or malty like WLP029 Burton Ale and 1318 London Ale III that I have used in earlier batches. I also wanted something with a little more character than Chico, so I went with one of my favorite yeasts 1272 American Ale II. The 1272 strain also doesn’t finish quite as dry as Chico which I think will work well here.



I purchased two sugar pumpkins at a local farm. Jennie helped carve the pumpkins and discard the innards. We roasted the pumpkin wedges and added them directly to the mash. Pumpkin can be treated like any other un-malted adjunct in that any extra enzymes in the grain will help convert the starches in the pumpkin into fermentable sugars. With my small partial mash and high percentage of pumpkin in the grist, some higher enzyme 6-row malt might have been a better choice.

 

It is so easy to go overboard adding too many different spices and/or adding too much spice. In our experience cinnamon sticks and pre-packaged “spice blends” available at homebrew shops can be too much and throw off the balance.  I reviewed the recipe from the last pumpkin beer we made, Pennant Race Pumpkin Wheat as I felt we had really dialed in the spice additions. I used the same ratio of the different spices relative to each other, but I did increase the amount of spices slightly because this beer is both a darker and hoppier beer than the pumpkin wheat.



When I sealed the fermenter the beer smelled amazing! My yeast starter wasn’t ready to pitch until the morning after brew day which also gave the wort some extra time to get down to pitching temperature. When I peeled back the lid to add the yeast the wort smelled so rich and malty. After two weeks I will rack the beer, taste a sample and decide if I want to add a vanilla bean.

Shipyard plans to keep Pumpkinhead on shelves well into winter, describing it as a “perfect Christmas beer”. The spices one might use in a pumpkin beer, and the spices a brewer might use in a spiced winter ale are actually quite similar. Is nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and clove out of place in a winter beer?

I planned to brew this beer at least two weeks earlier before I injured my left rotator cuff.  As a result this beer won’t quite be ready for Halloween, but we will have plenty for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. On brew day, in addition to carving the pumpkin, I needed Jennie’s help milling the grain and lifting the grain bag out of my 8-gallon kettle. This is the first five gallon batch that we’ve brewed just for us, as opposed for some type of event, in a long time.

See the full recipe here
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Ales for ALS Homebrew Competition - Essex 2015

On October 24 I finally tapped the kegs of Fort Dummer and Shareholder's Saison at Ales for ALS in Essex. I also brought two 12-packs of bottles from the last batch of Curly's Milk Stout. I'll have more detailed tasting notes on all three of those brews down the line. For now I will say that I was happy with all three.

Serving my latest batch of Curly's Milk Stout.

I still bottle almost all of my beers. Last year I purchased four 3-gallon kegs and a CO2 tank. I haven't used them that much because I still don't have a kegerator at home to keep the kegs cold. For this event I purchased a "jockey box" while Northern Brewer was offering 20% off of a single item.

Bottling Day: Fort Dummer (American Pale Ale)

One of my favorite local beer blogs is Hoppy Boston. For the most part it is a very simple blog. It’s just a guy, Ryan Brawn, who lives in the Boston area reviewing a beer. Why mess with a winning formula?

Recently Ryan wrote a post about a house beer. A house beer is a beer that you usually have on hand at home. I am working through a backlog of beer at my house. I love this concept. As a beer drinker it is too easy to be caught up in the latest and greatest, while taking the classics for granted. After going to three Red Sox games last month, and a vacation planned for June, my plan is to spend as little money in May as possible. When I have space and more disposable income, I am going to make sure to have a couple of commercial house beers. Right now I am thinking it’ll be a six pack of Newburyport Pale Ale, Notch Session Pils, and one seasonal beer.

For my homebrew, Curly’s Milk Stout has been my house beer for a while. I am still tweaking and trying to perfect the recipe. Recently I did a vertical of every batch of Curly’s that I have brewed. Jennie and I split the last 22 ounce bomber from the original, one gallon batch. That was the version she liked the best. So much for continued improvement. The beer keeps extraordinarily well. It is slightly hop-forward for its style with a late addition of Fuggles hops. This character fades over time, but there is enough malt complexity to compensate.

When I just want to have a beer, I don’t find myself going for Curly’s Milk Stout. I realized I needed a sessionable pale ale to have as a second house beer. After visiting the new Trillium Brewery in Canton, I spent a small fortune. It would certainly be cheaper and easier to have a juicy pale ale of my own at the house.

I originally brewed such a beer for the Ales for ALS Homebrew Competition in Essex, Fort Dummer. I loved that beer when I brewed it. I even hoarded the last couple of bottles, and the flavor kept quite nicely even after a few months. Since I am primarily brewing this beer for the house I brewed a three gallon batch. This would also give me plenty to bring to homebrew club meetings, enter into competitions, or just share with others. This is also a beer I want to drink when it’s fresh.

My original plan was to use the 1084 Irish Ale yeast I harvested from BeerSmith’s Dry Irish Stout, and subsequently used with Pyrite Pistol and Banshee Breakfast Stout. I ended up putting off this brew day for quite awhile and decided to buy a fresh package of yeast. I went with 1318 London Ale III. I love this yeast. I originally used it in the first batch of Curly’s Milk Stout and several English beers. Many craft brewers in the northeast use 1318 in hoppy pale ales. The yeast gives the beer a softer mouthfeel, and its fruity esters compliment fruity American hop varieties.

I scaled up my starting gravity of the beer to try and get the alcohol by volume over 5%. When the homebrew shop did not have any whole leaf Ahtanum hops, I substituted Citra just because. I flipped the dry hops to a degree; I added the whole leaf Citra during active fermentation to see if the expanded contact surface for the yeast would give the beer a juicier flavor. I racked the beer off the Citra after five days into a new vessel. I had planned to add a huge second dry hop five days before packaging. One day before I planned to bottle, I saw two packages of hops in my freezer that I forgot to add. I really need to label my hop additions. I think I will use these hops to brew another batch of Alan’s Stepchild.

I had been meaning to brew this up for weeks. I finally got around to it the same weekend as the Westbrook Gose debacle. That is probably why I never got around to posting a brew day post. I didn’t notice the oversight until after I bottled the beer!

Even though my second dry hop was less than an ounce, the beer still had a beautiful hop aroma as I bottled it. If this is going to be one of my house beers, I can always do a bigger dry hop next time. I can’t wait to crack one open in a couple of weeks.

See the full recipe here.

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Brew Day: Curly's Milk Stout 1.4

After Ales for ALS I was probably overdue to brew my next batch of Curly's Milk Stout, my flagship brew. I still have about six bottles left from Batch 1.3, I found four bottles from Batch 1.2, and still have a 22 ounce bomber from the beer's first iteration Batch 1.1. Once this batch is complete I'll have to do a vertical tasting of all four versions and notate any perceived differences.

Let's tweak the milk stout recipe again!

Recipe-wise I had to make some last-minute changes. Whenever I buy a lot of ingredients at once I always forget at least one. This time it was the Medium English Crystal malt which augments the sweetness of the lactose. Instead of going out of my way to buy one pound of grain I substituted a half pound respectively of 60L American Caramel Malt and German Caramel Wheat Malt. These were leftover malts from earlier batches. Since I mill my own grain at home they were still fresh. I don't anticipate this having much of an effect on the flavor, but I could be wrong.

Tasting Notes: Curly's Milk Stout

The original one gallon batch of Curly's Milk Stout was an amalgam of a quintessential example of the style: Mackeson XXX Stout, the most popular contemporary example: Left Hand Milk Stout, and other ingredients I like to use in porters and stouts. The beer more than met my modest expectations. It was a cruel twist of fate I only had a gallon to show for my efforts.

Large, rocky tan head. Looking good!

I couldn't believe until I checked my notes that I brewed the original batch February 23, 2014. As I brewed and prepared to drink the second batch of what I hoped to be a flagship beer I was concerned that perhaps the beer was not as good as I remember? Would the minor changes I made make the beer better?

I actually won something

In my recent post Making hard cider at home, I admitted that the only medal I had ever won in a competition was for a cider. I was hoping to change that last year as I vowed to enter more competitions. I didn't brew quite as much in 2016 as I had in 2015. A lot of what I brewed last year was for events like Jamboree and Ales over ALS. Entering more of my beers into competitions was one of my Brew Year's Resolutions.

I had gotten great feedback on my latest batch Pa's Lager. Before that I entered Pa's Lager and Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout into a competition in Portland, ME: the Groundhogs Day Homebrew Competition 2017 run by the Portland Mashing Maineiacs. Additionally I volunteered to judge in the competition. I'll take a built-in excuse to visit Portland. I made time to stop by Foundation and D.L. Geary's before heading home.

The competition wasn't huge with only around 100 entries. The categories were grouped into six different "tables" from which awards were given. I judged American Ales, American Porters, and American Stouts with a brewer and judge named Doug who is from nearby Swampscott, Mass. He was also a Certified BJCP judge and additionally he is a Certified Cicerone. Our scores tended to diverge a bit, but we were able to reach easy consensuses for the winners of both flights we judged.

Of the two beers I entered I probably had higher hopes for the Pumpkin Milk Stout. I was really happy with how that beer came out, and I thought it was a more forgiving beer and would better mask any flaws or off-flavors. After Doug and I finished our flights, I was milling around and saw the table where all of the judged beers were lined up. As I looked for my entries and any hopes I had of the Pumpkin Milk Stout placing were dashed. I found the bottle of Pumpkin Milk Stout with dried foam on the outside. If my beer gushed, there was no chance it would win anything.

The steward from that table told me the beer didn't gush when opened, but it did slowly foam after opening. I took a swig from the already judged bottle. It didn't taste offensive, but it clearly had fallen off from even a month earlier.

What I didn't find was Pa's Lager. The Best-in-Show judging was being conducted in a separate room that I could see into through a large window. I saw the bottles in contention for BOS on a table and I was pretty sure I saw a bottle with a yellow cap with the top filled in with black ink. Was that Pa's Lager? It certainly looked like it.

I made sure not to let myself get too excited, but as soon as I got home I kept refreshing the competition's website waiting for the winners to be announced. Finally, late on Monday night I saw this:

Pa's Lager finished in first place at it's table! After four years of brewing I finally have brewed a beer that medaled in a competition. I woke Jennie up to tell her and she was so happy and supportive. I shared the news with my family on social media. That a beer brewed in honor of Pa Chalifour won an award meant a lot to them also. 

For me as a brewer I was happy to receive the acknowledgement. In the past I have entered beer into competitions that I had high hopes for, but the entries maybe were not at the peak of freshness like the Pumpkin Milk Stout or I had entered "bad bottles" that were infected while the rest of the batch was fine. Some of the beers I have brewed that I thought were the best were made in too small of a quantity, or were consumed at an event like Jamboree, and couldn't be entered. This time everything came together. 

This past Saturday I received my scoresheets via email. Pa's Lager was judged by two professional brewers who gave it an score of 43.5. That is by far the best score I have ever received in a competition. Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout received a 26. The beer did gush. The judges thought the beer was thin and too spicy. That is further evidence that the bottle was infected because having designed and tasted the beer myself, the beer was neither when it was young. 

Now, was this the biggest competition? In terms of number of entries it wasn't. I am entering three different beers in the Ocean State Homebrew Competition which should have five or six times the number of entries. I also applied for three entries into the National Homebrew Competition, the largest competition in the country. 

I have several projects I am working on at the moment. A couple of them are beer-related so check this space for details. The key is balancing work, brewing, and life in general. I need to keep my pipeline of fresh beer churning if I want to keep doing well in competitions. If I want to go to the next level, a closet full of medals will only help the cause and give me credibility.

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Rebrew Day - Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout

There were a few reasons why I decided to re-brew Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout. I had not brewed any variant of Curly's Milk Stout or a Pumpkin Beer of any kind since my last batch in 2016. I also haven't had a dark beer on tap in several months. The timing just felt right. I also was too busy over the summer to brew a Marzen or a Festbier and let them lager properly. 

I stayed fairly close to the original recipe. I used American 2-row, Maine Malthouse Mapleton Pale specifically, as the base to help convert the starches in the pumpkin to fermentable sugars. I did replace the specialty malts with Muntons Crystal 110 (40L), Chocolate Malt, and Roasted Barley. I didn't have a chance to pick up the 1272 yeast from the last batch, so S05 will have to do and I'm sure will work fine.

Picked up sugar pumpkin at a local farm.

Thanks to Jennie for helping cut the pumpkin.

Roasted the pumpkin on the grill outside.

Obligatory grist picture.

Sparging the mash with pumpkin in it. 

In 2016 pumpkin beer was already trending down. Six years later the trend has continued. In the late 2010s marzen made a big comeback. It feels like every brewery has some kind of Oktoberfest event. This year it seems like more brewers are making the lighter, contemporary German Festbier style for the fall. Sam Adams has one of each in their sample pack. 

At the height of the pumpkin beer craze I wasn't the biggest pumpkin beer fan. I remember going to one pumpkin beer tasting and by the end all I could taste was cinnamon. I still enjoy well-made versions. One of my favorites was Cape Ann Brewing's Fisherman's Pumpkin Stout, and its big brother Imperial Pumpkin Stout. With Cape Ann no longer in business I did consider using an American Stout base, but it was past time to bring Curly back. 

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Brew Day: Galloupe St Gold

There really is something to be said for any brewer or beer drinker to have a house beer. A house beer being a beer that is kept in the house at all times. It's the beer you go to if you want to relax on a Tuesday night after work. For a craft beer drinker that can mean keeping a six or twelve-pack of a house beer in the fridge; for a homebrewer it's a beer brewed with some regularity and kept in stock.

In the past I tweaked and tweaked my milk stout recipe to perfect it. After continually tweaking, before finally dumbing it back down to a degree I am happy with the recipe. I haven't brewed a milk stout since Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout. Partly that is due to my hiatus from brewing, but mostly milk stout isn't something I want to drink all of the time.

When we moved to our new home, and I built my keener, Jennie suggested brewing an easy-drinking beer to have as a house beer. Jennie came up with the name Galloupe Ave Gold. When we brewed together more, Jennie was always coming up with names for beer. The easy thing would have been to brew a British Golden Ale, but that is a style I brew every summer for the summer. I decided to look farther afield from the name of the beer for inspiration.

The first beer that came to mind for inspiration was New Glarus Spotted Cow. The Beer Judge Certification Program lists Spotted Cow as a commercial example for a Cream Ale, however the brewery bristles at that designation and calls their beer a "Wisconsin Farmhouse Ale". The grist in Spotted Cow is Wisconsin-malted barley, flaked corm as corn is widely grown in Wisconsin, and flaked barley. Several years ago we brewed Northern Brewers Speckled Heifer kit, a beer that as the name indicates is inspired by Spotted Cow. New Glarus holds their recipes close to the vest, but the ingredients in the kit gave me an idea of where to start.

Working for Muntons, and being well-stocked with Muntons' products, my house beer has to use Muntons malt. I took the domestic malts in the Northern Brewer recipe and substituted in Muntons malts. I'm using Muntons Propino Pale Malt as the base, Muntons Caramalt in lieu of Carapils, Muntons Brewing Wheat in exchange for flaked barley, only keeping the flaked maize. This grist looks an awful lot like an English Pale Ale. The color was a touch light for the style so I added a very small amount of Muntons Roasted Barley for color adjustment.

If I really wanted to be married to the style I would probably use Fuggle or Kent Golding hops. Having plenty of American hops in my inventory, and wanting my beer to have a bit of an American hop flavor, I used Columbus for bittering and Cascade for flavor. Both hop additions were small enough that our house beer should still be approachable.

Final volume was short. The heat wrap around the carboy
helped the beer ferment at ale temperatures in my cold basement.

My brew day went fairly well until it was time to add the beer to my fermenter. I was well short of five gallons. I'm still not dialed-in brewing outside with a propane burner. Instead of topping off with water, I just went with what I had. The beer did finish a couple points higher than estimated which isn't the worst thing in the world. On packaging day there was enough beer to fill a three gallon keg and a half gallon growler.

This is the first iteration of the beer. I am not married to the recipe and will tweak it until I feel I've nailed it. I could try using traditional English hops. I could use a darker crystal malt if the malt flavor is too generic. I think some amber malt could add a nice biscuit flavor.

What Jennie wants and I am trying to achieve with this beer is drinkability and approachability. I will know I have perfected this beer if it is a beer that both craft and non-craft drinkers enjoy.

As for the name, our house is on Galloupe Avenue, but when the city replaced the street signs the new signs initially said "Galloupe St". There was also some confusion with the direction of the street. I'm glad I snapped a photo so this multi-faceted fail can live on.

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Brew Day: Peabody Pale Ale (American Pale Ale)

The latest installment in my experimentation within the broad category that is the American Pale Ale is a recipe that I threw together in a matter of minutes. While assembling the ingredients for Curly's Milk Stout I realized I had a lot of odds and ends lying around. Half-full bags of specialty grains, zip-locked bags of hops. None of this stuff is getting better with age.

Double brew day in-progress.

The recipe for Curly's Milk Stout called for one pound of light dry malt extract. However I only had a three pound bag. It made perfect sense to use the rest of that extract for a one gallon batch. I stepped some crystal malt I had lying around for color, flavor, body, and hopefully a bit of freshness.

New England Homebrewers Jamboree

This year I have rejoined and have been more active with the Northshore Brewers. This year was also my first year attending the New England Homebrewers Jamboree. The club brought an astounding 100 beers to the event. I brought a keg of the Galaxy IPA, and several other members brought their single hop beers.

That's my beer!

In hindsight I wish I had planned ahead and brought some of my better beers like Curly's Milk Stout, Camp Randall Red IPA, or Walk-Off White. The club had a series of randalls set up including a coconut porter randalled through fresh coconut, fruit beers randalled through fresh fruit. A fresh batch of Walk-Off White randalled through fresh orange peel would be awesome.

Tasting Notes: Curly's Chocolate and Coffee Milk Stout

It is coming up on time to brew another batch of Curly's Milk Stout, my flagship beer. After Ales for ALS I was down to a half dozen bottles. I have been hoarding the chocolate and coffee variants since I ended up with about eight bottles of each. Overall I am happy with how both came out.

Coffee and chocolate milk stouts. 

The coffee in the aroma of the coffee is dominant. It is earthy with notes of fresh pot soil. The velvety dark chocolate aroma in the chocolate variant plays a supporting role with the other aromas from the base beer.

Three brews for the price of one

So much to brew, so little time. I have at least a dozen beers I've been meaning to brew, but haven't. I have recipes saved that I developed months and even years ago that I haven't brewed. Split batches are a great way to make multiple beers at the same time. A brewer can split a batch at almost any point in the process. Brulosophy conducts several experiments by splitting batches and only changing one variable.

The beauty of split-batches.

After mashing and sparging you can split the wort and do separate boils with entirely different hop schedules, brewers can split the batch after the boil and pitch more than one type of yeast. or as I did this weekend you can split a batch after primary fermentation. Curly's Milk Stout was in the primary fermentation vessel for three weeks and was ready to be racked into a secondary vessel. This was the perfect time to split the batch and make my coffee and chocolate variants.

Beer Inspiration in our Backyard: Gentile Brewing Company

In the past couple of months I have brewed a couple of big beers: Banshee Breakfast Stout and Pyrite Pistol. I also brewed my first sour beer, Dawson's Kriek. I am very excited about these beers. I look forward to cellaring them for months and years to come. What I am missing, are the more sessionable type of beers I typically brew.

My latest batch of Curly's Milk Stout is just about ready. It is my flagship, but I don't drink it every day like Jim Koch drinks Boston Lager. I am starting to think the beer is a little too heavy, and I might tweak the recipe further before my next brew day. After tasting BeerSmith's Dry Irish Stout on bottling day I think that beer is going to be outstanding, and it is as simple as anything I have ever done. Lately I have found myself craving simpler beers.

 
The Celebration Clone and Pa's Lager were gone in a couple of sessions. I have already drank all of the Misplaced Bitterness; it was only a one gallon batch and that was always going to be a one-off brew. Trans-Atlantic Ale will also more than likely be a one-off. I want to get back to perfecting a house pale ale recipe. Something I can go to if I just want to have a beer and not fuss over it.

Shoulder to shoulder on opening night. 

 
Gentile Brewing is having their Grand Opening on May 4. If you stop in around 6:00 p.m., you will likely see me there. Jennie and I tried their Blonde and Porter last night at A&B Burger, and both were very, very good. Both beers had a very nice restrained nutty malt, yes malt, flavor. Paul Gentile told me that he used a light English base malt, lighter than Maris Otter, and a touch of dark caramel malt. Both were medium-bodied and eminently drinkable. We didn't stick around long enough for them to tap the IPA and Stout. Those will be the first beers I try at their tasting room.

Tasting Notes: Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout 2022 (30A)

The experience of doing short and quick written evaluations on three American Wheat Ales using BJCP criteria of aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel and overall impression was instructive. I decided to do something similar with this batch of Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout. I didn't go out of my way to evaluate commercial examples, but I did jot down thoughts on my beer.

Leaves just starting to turn. Feels like fall.

Aroma: Fall spice at first, clove slightly strongest. Some roast and earthy hop as it warms. 

Appearance: Opaque black. Moderate creamy tan head with good retention. 

Flavor: Spice not as present as in the aroma, doesn’t dominate base beer. Slightly bitter dark cocoa and French roast coffee malt flavor with some underlying sweetness. Medium earthy hop flavor and moderate bitterness. Fermentation fairly clean. 

Mouthfeel: Med full body, quite creamy. Medium low carbonation. Roast dries out finish. 

Overall: Really enjoyable and drinkable; not a meal in a glass. Not as smooth as I remember prior batches being. Clove does dominate the spice blend. May want to readjust. 

Much better head retention than some 
earlier batches.

The Muntons Chocolate Malt I used in this batch is much darker than the Briess Chocolate Malt I used in my last batch. Next time I will probably use Muntons Light Chocolate to try and get a smoother malt flavor and a sweeter finish. 

I will also fine tune the spice blend. The clove is subtle. I've brewed beers with clove that were almost phenolic. You don't get that here, but you do taste the clove more than the other spices. There's no heat from the ginger or cinnamon. The cinnamon doesn't linger on the palate like a lot of fall beers which I like. This recipe uses twice the amount of cinnamon as it does clove and nutmeg. I might do something like 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg and 1/4 tsp clove. 

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Brew Year's Resolutions for 2023

What should my resolutions be for this year? I have no idea what I am doing with my life. Fuck do I know?

My mental issues aren't this bad.

That is only a slight exaggeration. It's been three years since I made Brew Year's Resolutions. Before starting this post, I skimmed through my previous years resolutions. My batting average on these resolutions is about what I expect the 2023 Red Sox to be. I still haven't studied for, or taken the BJCP Exam since 2019. My basement brewery still doesn't have a sink and is as disorganized as I usually am. I also still have not perfected Galloupe Gold as our house beer. Why do I do these again?

Beer Inspiration in our Backyard: An ode to The Tap

A few weeks ago I wrote about what I dislike about craft beer bars. Places like I described in the article have a certain level of pretentiousness that I don't care for.




The Tap in Haverhill is not like that at all. I wouldn't call it a sports bar, but they do have a few large TVs that are usually on; if you want to watch a game and not talk, you can! There is also a pool table downstairs, and function space upstairs. The staff are all completely friendly and awesome. The service is always excellent, and they are always engaging with guests when they're not serving drinks.

Brew Day: Midlands Mild

One of the stated reasons I saw as to why Guinness developed Guinness Blonde American Lager is that people don't drink stouts during the summer. I get not wanting a boozy, heavy beer on the beach or at a cookout, but Guinness Draught is actually a good summer beer. It is light at 4.2% ABV, roughly on par with the deluge of session IPAs that have hit the market. It is certainly drinkable enough for a day-long cookout. People just can't get past the color of the beer.

Slowly filling the carboy and aerating the wort.

To show once and for all that dark beer can be enjoyed during the summer I am brewing another session beer style from the British Isles, a mild. At 4.5% ABV or under, the beer is light enough for a hot summer day. The style was traditionally consumed by English miners and factory workers. If you can enjoy a mild after a day in a coal mine or steel mill, I'd say it is okay for mowing the lawn.