I know it's been a while since I last updated the blog. Jenna and I have been working a lot. I managed to brew a maple porter. For those of you who may not know what a porter is, a porter is an ale, usually with a light brown to dark brown appearance. It typically has a malt aroma and flavor with some mild roastiness. Sometimes it has a caramelly, grainy, bready, or nutty flavor as well. I added pure grade A maple syrup to my beer to give it a nice sweet maple taste. Porters originated in England and are considered the precursor to stouts.
I also managed to make a Barley wine and did what is called a partygyle mashing technique. Typically a Barley wine is a very strong beer usually between 8-12% abv. Since so much grain is used in making a Barley wine, brewers will typically take the first wort (term used for pre-beer liquid) and start boiling it. They then heat more water (liquor) and use that to get the rest of the sugars out of the grain making a substantially weaker beer but also getting a 2 for 1 deal out of the grains. I took the second runnings from my Barley wine and made a cinnamon vanilla beer with some anise in there as well. I'm hoping its a good spiced beer for Christmas time. The Barley wine is going to be aged for a long time so I'll keep you all updated.
I brewed an Imperial IPA a few weeks ago and its currently being dry-hopped with the last of my homegrown hops. We recently acquired some Ipswich ale yeast and I've plated it on a petri dish and made a starter as well. In my next update I'll be displaying pictures of the yeast plates and a little more information about the lab.
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