Who’s in the Garden Grand Cru

Posted: January 25th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Grand Cru, Homebrew | 2 Comments »

I’ve made a few beers from the Complete Joy of Home Brewing with great success and always wanted to make a Grand Cru. I got a shiny new 5 gallon brew pot for Christmas, so it’s maiden voyage was Who’s in the Garden Grand Cru. Honey always boils high in the pot, and every time I brew a beer with honey in a 3 gallon pot it boils over and makes a huge mess. If you don’t have a 5 gallon (or larger) pot, go get one now!

I hadn’t made a beer with spices in it yet, so adding coriander and sweet orange was exciting. It really smelled good, that’s for sure! And with the current hops shortage going on these days, it was handy that all I needed was 2oz of Hallertauer hops rather than something harder to find (no Northern Brewer in these parts, for example).

In the past, I’ve made a Duvel with 2 pounds of honey in it (one of my favorite beers to brew), and every time I make that beer it takes f o r e v e r for the yeast to get active. Seriously, like 3-5 days sometimes. Just enough to think I may need to pitch more yeast. So that’s what I expected with the Grand Cru. In under 24 hours, it was vigorously fermenting and had a lovely yeasty foam on top. About a week later, it’s still bubbling along and probably will keep it up for another week or two.

I’m a little unorthodox in my brewing methodologies because I don’t check my initial and final specific gravities. Why not? Because I’ve broken two hydrometers and I’m tired of buying new ones! But it’s also pretty easy to tell when a beer is done fermenting and ready to bottle. Also, I bottle and don’t keg beer because I don’t have a keg fridge, and I don’t really need the temptation of beer on tap in my own home all the time.

Anyway, it’ll be neat to taste how this turns out. I figure I’ll get to drink it some time in March or April.

---