2 year old Kriek finally kegged and ready to drink!

I was hoping to get a chance to homebrew this week, but alas, it wasn't in the cards. I did however get a lager yeast started on a stirplate, and next week I'll brew the first of a series of lagers that I am very excited about.

Since Clarissa's birthday is coming up on Saturday, I decided to take some samples of various things that I've had going so we could decide what to serve for her birthday beer. The first beer I sampled was the amber farmhouse ale we brewed together for her birthday, but it was obvious that it was still not ready. The brett C hasn't done much, and I'm sure it will be good, but it needs a few more months. And it might get some cherries since I still have an ass-pile in the freezer taking up room. The trippel was also pretty good, but what was really, really good was the Flanders red-kriek. So that's what we decided to put on, and when her real birthday beer is done, maybe we will just bottle it.

The kriek started off as a Flanders Red, which I brewed in Brooklyn with Ray in August of 2008. I kegged it before we moved to Portland, and even served some before deciding that it was just a little too lackluster and needed some extra souring. I still had about 4 gallons of beer, which I topped off with a little Belgian Dark Strong and some of the new Flanders red brewed with Al B's bug blend. I added a bunch of fresh cherries and some oak chips almost 3 months ago, and I am finally happy with the flavor.

Once it's carbonated I'll be sure to do a full tasting. I feel like it could use a little more malt background and a touch more sourness, but overall I am very happy with it, and the cherry flavor couldn't be better. The color is amazing, such a bright, clear cherry-red! It is probably the best sour beer I have done so far.

I also kegged up the Rye beer I did 3 weeks ago, and I honestly don't know what I think about it. It only dropped to 1.016, and i was hoping to get it at least 3 points lower. Also the hops were not that pronounced, and there was a tannic tea flavor to the beer, but I usually find that drops out after a week in the keg. So we'll see, I will try to get a tasting of that up in the next week too.

Sour Cherries!

Today I brewed what I hope will be a very interesting beer: a saison with 100% Pilsner malt and 100% Northern Brewer hops. I have never tried these hops exclusively in a beer, in fact I've hardly used them at all. But more on that beer later when I get time to post the recipe. For now I'd like to catch up on a couple things that I've been doing to other beers.

I'm pretty proud to say that I brewed Alameda's second batch of Black IPA [Cascadian Dark Ale for those Cascadians with fragile egos ; ) ] with just a little help from Eric. It's probably my 4th or 5th batch I've brewed there with a little backup support, and I think pretty soon I'll be ready to brew on my own. In fact that's the plan, during the GABF I'll be the one sticking around to care for the brewery while Carston and Eric are gone. As for the beer itself, I think it's going to be a big improvement over batch one. We undershot our target gravity on the 1st batch, leaving an extremely hop-forward beer with a really spicy Zeus profile, but lacking in malt to back it up. It kind of tastes like a dry robust porter with a shitload of bitterness and pungent/spicy hops. Not bad actually, but not really what we wanted.

Batch 2 was pretty much completely reformulated. The base is Rahr 2-row malt, and we added to that small portions of Munich, Crisp C-77, Carafa, chocolate, roasted barley, and flaked oats. We got the O.G. up to a solid 1.072. The hops were Simcoe, Cascade, and Amarillo with a pretty large flameout addition, and we are going to dry hop it. Flavor samples of the fermenting beer are promising!

On the homebrew front, I picked up 25 lbs. of pitted Montmorency sour pie cherries from a processing place in Yamhill for $50. It's called Fruihill Inc, if anyone is looking for sour pie cherries. It's a pretty good deal, and although I really like the flavor my last sour cherry beer got from the pits, it would have actually cost more to get them with pits.

I pulled a flavor / gravity sample of the Flanders Red that Ray and I brewed 2 years ago, and it tastes like it is begging for some cherries. I also opened a bottle of Upright "Six" for inspiration, which has been sitting in my garage, not even refrigerated, since at least December. I wasn't sure what to expect but it actually tastes incredible with that amount of age on it, even when not handled ideally. It's good fresh, but it really comes into its own after 6 months with a very dry spicy mouthfeel, huge carbonation, and some Belgian esters blending with caramel malt and cherry-like flavors. Go try it and grab a bottle to age while you're at it.

I added 7 lbs. of the sour pie cherries, plus 2 lbs. of sweet dark cherries with pits, to my already almost 2 year old flanders red. It really seems to have improved over the last 6 months, about the time that I added AlB's bugs to the keg and topped it off with some Belgian Dark Strong, and a bit of our latest batch of Flanders. The beer itself tastes good but it could actually be a little maltier. It may turn out less of a flanders and more of a generic sour kriek cherry-bomb, which I can't really say I would be sad about. I also added a bit of French oak to the secondary, and maybe this will all get bottled in 2-3 months time.

The remainder of the cherries were frozen in quart bags. They also make great desserts. Clarissa cooked up a great cobbler last week with them. They have a really nice sourness and also a spicy cinnamon-like flavor.

Here are a couple of cocktails Clarissa and I made recently: This is just "for fun" stuff.

Googly-eyed bloody mary made with home-pickled asparagus (awesome), and some of a hot sauce that Paul made with Chiles de Arbol (in the Red Rocket bottle). We also tried some Mazi's Piri-Piri in one of them, which is a great hot sauce, but I'm not sure if you can get it out here. We got it at Murray's Cheese on a recommendation from one of the Sixpoint brewers.

This is simply fresh, super sweet seedless watermelon, crushed up with ice, mint, and Knob Creek bourbon. Might be nice to try it with Thai Basil in the future instead of mint.