Bottled the Wedding

We bottled two batches today, so I'm down to three more batches to deal with. There's a Belgian strong dark aging in my office, an Apple Brandy Barrel Brew aging in Lansdale, and a saison that needs to be racked in Lansdale. I have hops planted in Williamstown and Maple Shade, too! Forgive my lack of details, but I'll get the malt and grain bills up soon.

The first, "Ball and Chain" is an aptly named beer we originally thought we were going to serve at the wedding, but we ultimately decided that transporting homebrew and having enough time for it to settle and clear would have been a problem. It's a basic pale and crystal base, with some fun going on with the hops; I'll update with the hopping bill later.

The second, "Whatever, I'm Pumping," is a British best bitter, and is an experiment with a dry English ale yeast. There was a mild medicinal note, but I'm not sure if that was from the yeast or not and I bottled it directly from the primary.

T-minus one week!

Oude Geuze Boon Mariage Parfait

It's been a while since the last post, but, alas, these are the consequences of the first year of classes. Things should slow down just a little bit until the fall.

I tried a bottle of geuze I picked up in New Jersey the other week. A geuze is essentially a blend of a lambics, each of different ages. Reading some of the descriptions on Beer Advocate such as "great funky horseblanket/Camambert aromas" can certainly turn a stomach as well as evoke sensations of a compost heap and cooked broccoli, but hell, let's give it a shot.

The color was coppery, with a light shade of orange an just a touch of a cardboard box brown. Its nose was sour, with cheesy, organic, and funky Brett notes. It acquired a more citrus, lemon-zesty quality as it warmed. I'd say the beer was best probably slightly chilled, but not too cold to mask any of the flavors. The palate was light, with a nice sour note, thought not as face-puckering as some other lambics I've tried. Again, some hints of a lemon or lime, negligible to non-existent bitterness, with just some slight hints of malt to remind you that there's actually barley somewhere in the process. Nothing too funky going on in general, though it certainly takes a few tries to not be put off by the flavor of these beers.

This beer is 100% spontaneously fermented, meaning they open the fermenting vessels and hope for the best. I don't think I could get away with this in my dusty, Kitty hair laden basement, though it may be fun to brew one of these this summer, dropping in the dregs of some funky beers over the course of six to eight months and see what happens.