BrewBrain Sports Investing

Once again, I finished brewing well after my bedtime last night. The way the weekends have been these days, I can’t get started until around 7:00 at night. With roughly a 5 - 5.5 hour brewing session, that leads to a late night.

This brew is a Goulash Amber Ale. Basically, I had half a pound each of Cara-Pils/Dextrine, Crystal 60, Munich 10L, Special B and Vienna for grains and 1 ounce Centennial, 1 ounce EKG and 2 ounces Amarillo hops sitting around waiting for a beer to flavor. These ingredients don’t last forever, so I had to brew. Twist my arm.

It was supposed to be an IPA, but I screwed up and bought 8 pounds of 2-row at the brew shop instead of 10. With 8 pounds it fit the American Amber profile better than IPA. It’s going to be a hoppy amber, but that’s not a problem in my opinion. Bring ‘em on!

So, I think I’m going to have to stop brewing for a while. I have a big backlog of beers that will need drinking containers at some point. I’m not kegging yet, so I’ll have to gather enough bottles for all of it.

Here’s the pipeline:

Vanilla Porter - I’m not optimistic about this one. I chopped up four vanilla beans and added them to the secondary over a month ago. I have also added vanilla extract on a couple of occasions. Still, when I tasted it the other day, I got no vanilla flavor at all. It isn’t really a porter that’s going to stand on its own in my opinion. All I can do is add some more extract at bottling time and hope for the best. Even though it’s been over a month in secondary, I opted to use the batch of bottles I had on Friday night on my American Amber.

American Amber 1 - I just bottled this on Friday night. The tasting went well - smooth and clean as a whistle. The color is beautiful. I’ll have to take photos and post reviews of all my beers. This one is a light golden amber color with bright ruby highlights where the light hits the glass - at least without carbonation. I’ll know in four weeks how the finished product performs. I’m pretty excited about it. If it does what I think it’ll do, it may become my Almaden Haus Ale.

IPA - I racked this to secndary last week. It needs a couple more weeks before it needs bottles.

Goulash Amber Ale - This is what I brewed up last night. For good measure, I added 5 ounces of apples to the mash. I don’t know if that was enough to taste, but I didn’t want to go overboard. Too little won’t ruin the beer, and I can always add more later. I’m just experimenting here.

I’m planning to add a homebrew section to the main Brew Brain site soon. I’ll post recipes I like, equipment photos, etc. I get a lot of hits on this blog from people looking for that sort of information, especially the ol’ cooler-to-mash tun conversion.

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