another week, another brew

all brewed and carboyed is the DaveDave Walnut Irish Red Ale, which featured a brewing session by myself, william, and our own irish red, mr. patrick meier. this is one that will more than likely go down in the books of davedave as yet another batch of fantastic brew. we used a basic amber ale foundation, but added caramel and toasted malts, cinnamon, and our own baked vanilla soaked walnuts to the secondary. naturally we also used an irish ale yeast, wyeast 1084. as for the usual progression, 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks bottling, looks like we'll be enjoying our reds about a month shy of st. pattys, although the added month wait will help them age nicely and should bring these guys closer to full maturation. look for some to turn up at a small gathering around here in the near future.

in other news, we've bottled 53 Batch Elevens, which when sampled straight from the carboy, were absolutely fantastic. initial tastes were quite hoppy, but not as bleed-for-weeks blinding as we had hoped. fear not; a bit of patience and bottle conditioning (plus coldness and carbonation) will allow more of the bitter hop flavors to pull out. regardless, the brew will be pretty damn fabulous - they will be ready for drinking around valentines day.

and FINALLY, God will be ready to bottle in about a week. that's right. you'll all be able to try the infamous 22% beer that we've been talking about for the last 3 months. but while we were talking, god was in its secondary fermentation, aging with whiskey soaked oak chips, which have had quite an impact on the brew. yesterday, we pulled about a half gallon of god, added 3 lbs more dark malt and reboiled. essentially - if you were worried - we boiled off the alcohol in that half gallon but, considering 3 lbs per 1/2 gallon makes 30 lbs per 5 gal, which is more concentrated than when we initially brewed, we're actually upping the ABV in the long run. what we've done here is taken the reboil, carboyed it, and then added another unit of the super high gravity yeast, which will create a "starter" of yeast which we will then add to God, which should help ferment those fussy, remaining sugars that have evaded the grips of the previous, normal, "lazy man" yeast that we are now substituting with steroid HGH superhero yeast. the stater pitch will take place on or around wednesday, with bottling more than likely happening next monday or tuesday.


finally, we've fruited the beer. the Border Jumper beer, it has been found, goes perfect with a slice of lemon. lime would more than likely suffice as well, but initial taste tests have found that a lemon rimmed and squeezed BJ is just fantastic. adding some lemon flavors to the brew could be a good idea for a remake session.



so now we've realized two questions:

1) what name shall we give the Walnut Irish Red Ale?
2) what are some of your favorite combinations of beer + (something that goes into your beer: ie. lime, salt, lsd, etc.)?