Homebrew – Roktoberfest
Brewery: Homebrewed
Where: Hickory, NC
Beer: Roktoberfest
Style: Marzen / Oktoberfest
IBU: 21 IBU
ABV: 6.2%
I haven't reviewed one of my homebrews here lately, so I decided to give it a whirl tonight. My "Roktoberfest" has been in the bottle since August 21st, so I decided to give it a whirl. I brewed this beer on March 14, 2010 and got aged quite a bit prior to bottling. I actually ran this beer through 3 stages of fermentation... not because I really wanted to but because I never got around to getting it in the bottles. I finally bottled it on August 21st and decided to have my first taste of it tonight. The recipe for this beer is as follows:
5.50 Gallon Batch - All Grain Recipe
4.5 lbs 2-row German Pilsner malt
2.5 lbs Vienna malt
2.0 lbs Munich Malt (20L)
1.0 lb Aromatic Malt
1.0 lb Crystal malt (20L)
0.5 lb Cara-pils malt
0.5 lb Crystal malt (40L)
1.0 oz Saaz (5.5%) hops (60 minutes)
0.25 oz Saaz (5.5%) hops (45 minutes)
1.0L starter using White Labs WLP-029 Kolsch/German Ale yeast
Mashed at 154°F for 60 minutes, batch sparged, and ran a 60-minute boil
The malt aroma of this beer was quite nice as soon as I opened the bottle, and it got even better as I poured it into the glass. The color of this beer is just a tad darker than I had hoped for but it also hasn't had time to cold crash in the bottles. This one only got to chill for a couple hours instead of a couple days. The head is nice and thick and the carbonation level is just about perfect. The beer has a great malty body followed by an earthy hop balance provided by the early-addition Saaz hops. I'm definitely going to enjoy this batch during the fall months of this year.
My Imperial Stout might be coming up here shortly. I'm about ready to give a full taste to that batch very soon.
Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA
Brewery: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Where: Milton, Deleware
Beer: 60-Minute IPA
Style: American IPA
IBU: 60
ABV: 6.0%
It's the first day of fall, and finding a beer choice to commemorate this change of seasons isn't too difficult. A beer with a nice hop punch is as good as any, so I decided to pop open one of Dogfish Head's flagship beers.
For those of you who might not know about the hopping process involved in making beer, here's a quick rundown... Hops are leafy flowers that are added to beer for three different purposes. Hops are added to the boil stage of the brewing process to help balance the sweetness of the malted barley, to provide flavor, and to create a nice aroma in the beer. Each of these aspects requires that hops be added at different stages in the boil. Hops added early in the boil are strictly for bittering to counter the sweetness of all the sugars in the wort. Hops added in the mid boil are for flavoring purposes. Hops added near the end of the boil are for their aromatic properties. Different amounts and types of hops are added in each of these stages to create unique flavor and aroma profiles in the different beers.
In Dogfish Head's 60-minute IPA, hops are added continuously throughout the 60-minute boil process to create it's flavor and aroma profile. In the style of an American IPA, this beer fits really well with an excellent malt flavor backed by hop bitterness and aroma. Excellent beer overall...
Terrapin Golden Ale
Brewery: Terrapin Beer Company
Where: Athens, GA
Beer: Terrapin Golden Ale
Style: American Blonde Ale
IBU: 21
ABV: 5.3%
Here's another excellent session beer for an all-afternoon binge on a hot summer day... Terrapin Beer Company's Golden Ale is a light-bodied ale that is just running over with flavor and refreshing crispness that goes perfect with a sunny 90° afternoon in August. This beer pours with a rich golden color and a thick foamy head that hangs around for a long time. There is very little hop presence in the nose but its nearly perfectly balanced with the malt, letting the sweetness of the Munich and Vienna malts show through nicely. I'm a big fan of this beer style, even though it's not really a favorite of most hardcore home brewers and micro/craft beer aficionados that I know. It's a simple beer without a lot of frills, but they just taste great!
Sam Adams Coastal Wheat
Brewery: Boston Beer Company
Where: Boston, MA
Beer: Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat
Style: American Pale Wheat Ale
IBU: N/A
ABV: 5.4%
In my humble opinion, wheat beers are some of the best thirst quenching brews for the hot summer months. Their light body and sweet flavor with a minimal hop presence make a fantastic summertime beer choice. The Coastal Wheat from the Samuel Adams Brewmaster's Collection is proving to be a formidable competitor in this style. Most of the really good wheat beers that I have tasted are brewed with some sort of small spice element, whether it be coriander or a citrus addition. A lot of them are slightly heavy on this aspect of the brew, but the Coastal Wheat has an infusion of lemon peel that creates a perfect balance within this beer. Some may not like this comment, but this beer is going to rank somewhere near the level of the Bell's Oberon in my book. If you are a fan of wheat beers, I suggest you try this one. If you haven't tried Oberon, maybe you should pick up a sixer of that too and try them side by side.
Chatoe Rogue – First Growth Wet Hop Ale
Brewery: Rogue Ales
Where: Newport, Oregon
Beer: Chatoe Rogue First Growth Wet Hop Ale
Style: American Pale Ale
IBU: 40
ABV: 6.4%
Here we have another installment from one of my favorite breweries. The Chatoe Rogue First Growth Wet Hop Ale has been sitting on my shelf for a while now so I decided to chill it and pop the top this evening to see what's been going on in Oregon lately. The First Growth Wet Hop Ale is an American pale ale with a fantastic hop flavor and aroma. It has a rich golden orange appearance in the glass with a thick head. The flavor is quite crisp and refreshing with a very nice hop presence. The Munich malts used by Rogue in this beer give it a very nice malt presence when coupled with the two-row pale malt. The hops used in this beer are first growth Independent and Revolution. They come together for a great bitterness and piney flavor.
Sometimes it sucks to live on the east coast. There are some great beers made around here but the west coast is still the beer cultural center of the free world, in my humble opinion :) Rogue has several beers in the Chatoe Rogue First Growth series, but this is the only one I could get my hands on... Maybe I just need to travel more...
Sierra Nevada Tumbler
Brewery: Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
Where: Chico, CA
Beer: Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale
Style: American Brown Ale
IBU: 37 IBU
ABV: 5.5%
I was in a local convenient store the other night and decided to have a look at their beer cooler. I'm glad I did because I found a sixer of Sierra Nevada's Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale, which is one of their seasonals that I haven't tried yet. As far as breweries go, Sierra Nevada seems to be consistently one of my favorite alongside Rogue Ales and a few others. It's just one of those where I never taste a beer that I wouldn't want to have a second glass... Consistently excellent at every turn.
Sierra Nevada's Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale has a rich brown color with a thick head in the glass. It has an immediate aroma of northwestern hops and a sweetness on the tongue created by the combination of two-row pale, crystal, chocolate, and smoked malts. The sweetness lingers, which suits me just fine! From the website:
As the nights grow cool, the leaves on the valley oaks begin to turn and fall. In honor of this yearly dance, we bring you Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale and invite you to enjoy the show. We use malt within days of roasting at the peak of its flavor to give Tumbler a gracefully smooth malt character. So pour a glass, and grab a window seat to watch as the leaves come tumbling down.
Reading that makes me wish this summer heat around here would ease up just a bit... Fall is just around the corner. As the weather cools, I'll be working on beers more like this one and the darker varities of stouts to keep things warm inside...
Give this one a try!
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