For Christmas, my parents bought me an Amber Ale kit from Blackstone Valley Brewing Supply. I think I will make it next week, but I think I will modify it somehow. The people from the Homebrewing LJ community recommended steeping orange peel, or adding honey, or trying a different yeast strain. Considering I have an enormous bear of honey, I will probably add about a pound of that. If I can make it to the brewing store, I will get some orange peel and possibly a different yeast as well. Safale T-58 was the specific strain suggested. Beer and Wine claims to have it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have it in stock. Boston Brewin’ may have it; they have no website so I can’t check. I may also add some malto-dextrin and candi sugar, just to see what happens.
Because the ale kit has both extract and grains, I’m going to take the spent grains and try to make bread with them. This recipe might work, but I have actually never made bread by hand before! If I end up with more than 3 cups of grains, I might make two loaves. I’ve found several for the bread machine: Spent-grain beer bread (contains eggs), honey wheat bread, honey wheat/rye bread, herbed spelt or whole wheat bread, and another eggy bread. I have purposefully left out anything that requires a starter for the bread.
On another note, I am considering the following recipes for my next beers:
- Mother Earth Old Ale or this Old Ale with English malt instead of Belgian. To be aged until wintertime!
- Belgian-style ales: This extract kit is an option. Yet another option: Triple Play (extract recipe) or this extract kit (advantage: cheap). I am also considering trying one of the Stone Vertical Epic ales, specifically the 06.06.06 version.
- Extract barleywine recipe from BeerAdvocate. This will require about a month of secondary fermentation on oak chips. (Well, the recipe doesn’t call for it, but I’m going to try it.), likely this coming winter. Alternate: Mindblowing Barleywine
- Southern Tier Pumking clone.
To be brewed once #8 is complete and I have enough empty bottles. #9Delayed until next fall for reasons of timing and funding. - Dogfish Raison D’Ètre clone. Hard. For springtime 2010 perhaps.
These bring me up to about batch 12. The Free Beer recipe is right out because WTF GUARANA IN BEER? However, there’s no real point in assigning numbers to batches I haven’t brewed!
crossposted from The Hydrogen Project