Roots Brewing has released a chocolate habañero stout; a stout brewed with chocolate malt, chocolate wheat & five pounds of coco nibs in the mash, boiled for two hours during six pounds of organic free trade semi sweet chocolate syrup made by Alma Chocolate is added. After fermentation they dry hopped with 100 chopped habañeros. For those of you not in Portland, Alma Chocolate is a local chocolatier that makes fantastic, interesting, fancy chocolates.

On first pouring, this beer has a chili pepper aroma along with dark malt notes — just as you might expect — and a medium head that dissipates fairly quickly. This isn’t an oily Guinness, it’s more in the vein of a dry Irish stout. It is completely black, not even a hint of wan Portland afternoon light gets through this pint.

As it warms, the flavors definitely improve. On my first taste, this stout was dry, not very chocolatey, and I couldn’t taste the habañeros at all. Now that it’s been warming for a little bit, there’s a definite spiciness up front and in the finish. Swishing it around in my mouth makes my gums tingle with spice – both weird and interesting in a beer. If you’re expecting this to be a sweet chocolate stout like Young’s Double Chocolate stout, you’ll be disappointed. This has more of a cocoa nib chocolate character rather than a bittersweet chocolate flavor. The sweetness is more apparent after 30 minutes of warming, so come in for a pint and relax a while to let the flavors come out.

The spice level definitely grows over time, more of a nice slow burn that lingers than a sharp up-front heat. I can also taste the chilies in the finish, which give a slightly toasted note to the flavor.

All in all, this ended up being a pretty interesting stout. I’m not sure the habañeros were necessary, though the warm tingle on the back of my tongue is nice on a blustery Portland day. I almost want the chocolate to be more prominent or sweeter since it’s muted by the black malt of the stout and the chili flavors. However, this had the potential to be a really weird beer, and instead it was a tasty and interesting beer.

Keep up the experimentation, Roots!

I’m brewing a couple of batches of Kolsch for a friend’s wedding in September, which is fun and I’m excited they want my beer. When I brewed this Kolsch for my own wedding, I foolishly sanitized the bottling bucket and failed to rinse it absolutely clean. That batch was undrinkable as it had the distinct taste of Star San. Not wanting to experience this again, I figured I should get started just in case something goes wrong.

Well, so far it’s much darker than I want it to be. The lady at Let’s Brew convinced me that 1lb of dry amber malt wasn’t that dark, since they didn’t have the 2lbs of extra light malt I needed. Stupid me! I mean, seriously, it looks like a dark amber or a light brown ale right now, and it’s 90% wheat and extra light malt extract.

This has also convinced me to buy a propane burner for brewing, rather than continue to use my stove top. The burner and range top got super hot yesterday, which makes me think my beers are carmelizing and all becoming darker than they should be. So my next Kolsch batch will be brewed al fresco. Here’s hoping it all turns out alright!

Served in a tulip glass (they called it a chalice) on account of being 8.1% alcohol (can you imagine a couple of pints of that?), it sure is a pretty beer. Dark amber, red hues, clear like a ruby, with little head retention (a little foam around the rim of the glass). The up front aroma is of alcohol then warm malt and a hint of spice, like cloves or nutmeg.

It has a bubbly medium mouthfeel appropriate for the style, not too creamy or flat, but not too effervescent for the flavor. There’s a lot of malt and spice flavor, with a little caramel sweetness. A bit rich, but not overwhelming. There’s a slight tartness or tang in the finish that clears the palate and keeps the beer from being too sweet and sticky.

The Dubbel Suplex is pretty right-on for abbey style, and has matured nicely. I almost wonder what it would be like if aged in a bourbon barrel, but that might be over the top, making it too sweet and rich to drink in any quantity.

8.1%

This is actually an ideal beer for a warm spring day – full enough to take the chill off you when the wind blows, but light and crisp to compliment the warmth of the sun on your face. I could see it pairing nicely with sushi, or even udon. Something that doesn’t have strong spices that would overwhelm the ginger notes.

It reminds me a lot of the experimental ginger hefeweizen I brewed a couple of months ago, only more carbonated. I hope that my brew gets a bit more bubbly!

Also, it turns out that Laughing Buddha had to change its name to Trade Route Brewing due to a legal dispute. Since the brewery is in Seattle, I’ll have to check it out the next time I go north.

Lehua blossom, source of delicious honey

I just got back from a week on the big island of Hawai’i, home of Pele’s volcanos and the Ohia tree with its gorgeous red lehua flowers. Lehua honey is especially delicious, more buttery than any other honey I’ve tasted, and we thought it might make a good mead. So we returned with 10lbs of lehua honey in our checked baggage (yep, it’s ok to bring honey back to the mainland, but you can’t bring bees – go figure) and dreams of tasty mead.

Since you need 15lbs of honey to make 5 gallons of mead, I’ve added 2.5lbs of pasteurized agave syrup and 2.5lbs of raw agave syrup to lighten the color and flavor of the mead. I figure it worked well with the first mead, so why not try it again? I’m also going to pitch kolsch yeast along with champagne yeast with the hope of duplicating the success of my first mead-making accident. It turned out to be fantastic mead!

So here’s to Ohia and Lehua, whose love are making this (hopefully) wonderful mead possible! Cheers!

The wort is chilling in the kitchen sink at this moment, and I’m hoping that I added enough ginger. The recipe was simple enough that if I need to increase the ginger for next time it’s no big deal – it’s only 6.6lbs of bulk light/wheat malt, 3/4oz of hops, a vial of liquid yeast, plus however much ginger I want to use. The ingredients cost roughly $30, so that’s a $3.60 6-pack. Nice!

I based it on “Lovebite Weisbier” in the Joy of Homebrewing. I’ll pitch the hefeweizen yeast before I go to bed, and we’ll see what the fermentation fairy brings in the morning!

Inaugurator is dark like a brown ale in the glass, mostly opaque but allowing just enough light to shine through that it’s not pitch black like a stout. Imagine a medium-roast coffee in a glass, if you will. The initial head subsides pretty quickly, leaving no foam or lacing on the glass.

As you might expect there’s lots of malt in this beer, with a hint of dry chocolate on the back of the palate, along with a slight tang in the finish. The tang is almost reminiscent of black cherries. Luckily for me, there’s just enough hops to cut the sweetness, but not so much that it ruins the malty flavor. This beer is smooth, rich and not too heavy. Some might consider it a sweet beer, and it’s certainly sneakily boozy, but it would be surprisingly easy to drink all night.

As an inaugural doppelbock, I’d say it’s dark, smooth, and a little surprising just like our new president.

Fancy new packaging and labels!

I was at Fred Meyer the other day doing some grocery shopping when I noticed they had Bard’s Sorghum Beer on the shelves. What really caught my eye was the new design of the packaging – a complete departure from the previous pseudo-Celtic affair. A few months ago, during my gluten-free month, I had reviewed Bard’s Tale Dragon’s Gold beer and found it lacking. Not only was it spendy, but it was a shadow of what real beer is. But now that Bard’s Tale had re-branded as “Bard’s”, dropped the dragons and uncial script, and developed a whole new look, I figured it was only fair to give the beer another chance.

Poured into a pint glass, the beer has a golden honey color and is crystal clear. There’s little head retention, and some lacy foam on the glass as the head recedes. The main thing I noticed is that it’s  sweet on first taste, medium bodied, carbonated like a macrobrew – a medium bubble that’s like soda from a fountain rather than a can. It has a little metallic taste, slightly tangy from the sorghum, but not bitter. There’s a spicy, honey-like finish with a little alcohol flavor. In this case, the tang of sorghum seems to cut the sweetness of the beer, making it pretty drinkable.

I was really surpised to find that I enjoyed Bard’s re-branded beer. While it is still expensive, it’s less so than last spring, and they seem to have improved the recipe. They’re no longer calling it a lager, focusing instead on being the “original sorghum malt beer” which means all bets are off for style. It’s basically a sweet amber ale, as before, but not as rough around the edges.

Besides, I like the new packaging design. Good work, Bard’s!

And since I’m making cider, that means I have to drink some of last fall’s cider. This was made with previously frozen gallons of unpasteurized local apple cider, campden tablets, and cider yeast. Initially, it was very sweet. Then it became unbelievably carbonated and gushed out of the bottle. Now that it’s a year old, the carbonation has calmed down and the sweetness has reduced. It’s more of a semi-dry cider now.

Irish Stout with a local twist
Each year, I make a batch of Irish Stout for my friend’s St. Patrick’s Day party, which means I barely get any of the stout myself because all the party people drink it up. So I got wise and I’m making myself an early batch. I’m using the Toad Spit Stout recipe like last time, but I’m using Chinook and Willammette hops. I’ve also replaced the crystal malt with a rye crystal malt, and added organic roasted barley.

The best part is that I think I just unearthed a bottle of last year’s stout, so I’ll be able to compare the differences!

Their rotating tap list can be overwhelming, but a gorgeous warm day like this calls for something crisp and light so I chose Moylan’s Hefeweizen. For a hefe, this is a very clear and golden ale. No wheaty haze at all. I was also surprised on my first taste at how sweet – but not sugary – this beer is. It’s the sweet of hay drying in the summer sun, not the sweet of caramel or candy. It’s medium-bodied and well matched to a sunny but not hot day.

While a delicious beer, I’m not sure it qualifies as a hefeweizen. The lack of haze or citrus flavor left it tasting more like a cross between a cream ale and a kolsch. Not that I’m complaining! It just wasn’t a hefeweizen at all.

Now I wish I could go back for another and sit in the sun some more, but work calls…