Marc's Musings

At the end of last year, December 30 to be exact, I did a comparative taste testing of three stouts, my own Stormy Seas Stout, Guinness Extra Stout, and Allagash Black. Today, I’m brewing again–this time a nut brown ale I call “Nuttin’ Ales ME”–so I thought I’d blog the notes from that night.

When I brewed Stormy Seas, I thought I was brewing a clone of a Guinness Extra Stout. But the inclusion of Brettanmyces yeast gave it an unexpected twist. This taste testing was to help me see if it fit in a pre-existing beer “family,” or if it were just weird.

Stormy Seas Stout

• ABV: 6.5%
• Head: tan and relatively thick though a little uneven
• Color: wonderfully opaque (black as midnight on a moonless night)
• Nose: Slightly funky
• Tasting notes: Smooth, almost silky. The funky, melon-y flavors evenly filled my mouth.
• Finish: Sour
• Lingering impression: The silky feeling was what lingered.

Guinness Extra Stout

• ABV: 4.2%
• Head: thin with “harsh,” big bubbles
• Color: wonderfully opaque
• Nose: minimal, but almost…sour…and a little coffee
• Tasting notes: This one surprised me. It had been my favorite but tonight it merely slightly sour, mostly mass produced. Definite coffee flavors. The mouthfeel was disappointingly light.
• Finish: not any sensation in the mouth, just flavor
• Lingering impression: a powerful punch of flavor

Allagash Black

• ABV: 7.5%
• Head: thick and creamy
• Color: wonderfully opaque
• Nose: very nice boquet, clearly a stout, definite coffee notes
• Tasting notes: The carbonation seemed a bit harsh. The beer was slightly sour with definite, lingering coffee impressions.
• Finish: A sourness similiar to Stormy Seas but much cleaner finish
• Lingering impression: A wonderful coffee-esque stout flavor lingered

The Allagash Black was my favorite, and it helped salvage my impressions of my own brew. My stout was simply in a different family than the Guiness Extra. I even found myself liking the silkiness of my beer more than the others. I was surprised to not really like the Guinness. It’s good, but really didn’t taste as distinctive as the Stormy Seas or Allagash Black.

My favorite was the Allagash. So much so that I went down to Portland to tour the factory and taste some others!

Now that it’s been about three months, the Stormy Seas has really mellowed. The ripe cantaloupe flavors are toning down and a solid stout foundation is becoming noticeable. The sourness stays pronounced.

I can’t wait to see how Stormy Seas ages! Chances are I’ll have it for a while. This is definitely a sipping beer.

Whipped this up for tomorrow’s Yankee swap. It’s a sampler of my three most recent brews:

• Stormy Seas Stout
• Fruite of Eden
• O’Darn Irish Red

It was a very popular gift item!

I did forget that six packs have four sides. So after the Yankee swap, I created this fourth panel.

A couple weeks ago, I shared a recipe for making muffins with beer. These were so good, I decided to try again.

This time I used my Stormy Seas Stout. The muffins were definitely darker than those made with the O’Darn Irish Red! But still tasty. And incredibly easy!

So, I decided to try out an almost too easy beer bread recipe that my friend Renee pointed to on the Farmgirl Fare blog.

 

This bread is, as we say in Maine, “wicked” easy!

Here’s the loaf I made with my hoppy Fruit of Eden beer. This tasted amazingly good. Especially with a ham and cheese sandwich!!

Stormy Seas Stout is my latest homebrew. I love stouts. My first beer, Bombadil, was a coffee stout.

This time I brewed a stout from NorthernBrewer.com called “St. James Gate Foreign Extra Stout.” I renamed it because it was brewed during a summer thunderstorm, racked the first time during a torrential downpour, and bottled six months later during a snow storm!

The addition of a second strain of yeast and the aging both work to mimic the funky, fruity undertones that developed in process of brewing a beer sturdy enough to withstand travel on the seas in Victorian ships. Guinness originally brewed this for travel to the Carribean, Africa, and Asia. Apparently, Nigeria is the largest market for this stout today.

Out of the bottle, the first thing you notice is this beer is black. Opaque. Black as midnight on a moonless night. (Remember that from Twin Peaks?) This is the way I like my beer.

Funky, fruitty it is. Not what I expect from a stout. But much more drinkable than my Mo Joe Stout Porter. It turns out, this stout is a lambic. So it’ll age well for over a year or more.

Which is good. I’m still now sure what I think about this one. But I’ve been assured the flavor will continue to change!

After putting up the tree today, I felt like doing some work in the kitchen.

I like baked brie, and my wife bought me a pottery bowl thing so I decided to give it a whirl.

The bowl was a bit smaller in diameter than the round of brie so I had to do a bit of “shaping” to get it in.

For a mix, I used

• 1/2 Cup of brown sugar,
• 1 T of a mixture of David Gulack’s amazing green jalapeño sauce, some yellow mustard, and a couple drops of Dave’s Hurtin’ Jalapeño Sauce
• 1/2 Cup of dry roasted sunflower seeds

The sweet and salt and spicy make a great flavor combination!

Getting in the mood, I even made some muffins. Beer muffins. Hey, when you’re a homebrewer and make a brew that doesn’t taste as good as you’d like, you’ve got to do something with all that beer!

The recipe was up at site called Group Recipes. These were almost as simple as the brie. Just mix:

• 4 cups baking mix
• 12 ounce bottle of beer
• 4 tablespoons sugar

Mix it and pour into muffin tins. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes. Voilà!

Easy muffins. Great brie. Settling in for the evening.

This is my latest ale. A tribute to my enjoyment of hops.

This is a great beer. (It’s called Tongue Splitter from NortherBrewer.)

This is hoppy and fruity. Sort of citrus-y. In a really yummy.

And only 3% ABV. So you can enjoy more.

O’Darn Irish Ale is my latest brew. This summer I brewed F.M.A., a really good Irish Red Ale.

Over the course of the summer, I developed a real liking for hops. So I decided to add some more hops to the next batch I brewed.

Oops.

It’s still a good ale, it has a great finish. But it’s a bit tart at the start.

Won’t be doing that to this great Irish red again!

But I have a bit to work through before I have to worry about that.

And thanks to Larry Hehn for the name idea!

The moment not so many of you have been waiting for…only one person I can think of, really…

But, drum roll please.

Announcing the name of my latest beer: F.M.A.!! [the crowd goes wild]

Give the weirdness of the last few brews, my wife asked me to brew one that she would drink. So I named this Irish Red Ale “Förlåt Mig Ale”, which in English is “Forgive Me Ale.” (Cool how the acronym works in both languages, huh? [crowd chuckles in appreciation])

I was going to call it “Atonement Ale” but that sounded too pretentious. And I liked Larry Hehn’s suggestion of calling it “O’Darn” given it’s Irish nature. But I’ve settled on F.M.A.

It’s sort of an apology for the last few. And a celebration of second chances (an third and fourth and fifth chances)! With the last few beers, I felt obligated to explain the history as in the origin of a bock, or the spices used, or why the beer really tastes like an iced coffee.

Not so with this one. It’s just a good beer. Very drinkable, not high in alcohol content, and best of all, I don’t have to explain anything. I can just say, “Would you like a beer I brewed?”

So, bottoms up and I hope you have fun celebrating the Fourth of July in your own way!

Jack, Jack, bo-back,
Banana-fana fo-fack
Fee-fi-mo-mack
Jack!

I started a new batch of beer tonight. This time it’s an Irish Red Ale. And it’s once again time to ask your help in naming my brew.

If I were to use the Name Game song, would it be:

Ale, ale, bo-bale
Banana-fana fo-fale
Fee-fi-mo-male
Ale!

My last ale was a fail, so I’m thinking I’ll name this one “Atonement Ale” to atone for my past.

What do you creative folks think? What other names would go with this theme?

 
It’s been a couple weeks since I bottled my new beer, a porter stout with coffee that I call “Mo Joe Porter.”

The coffee is so pronounced in this brew that I’m not sure if I should describe it as an ale with coffee, or a coffee with ale.

I realize now where I goofed. I boiled the coffee before adding it to the second fermentation.

Adding anything to the wort is risky, especially if it’s not sanitized. Not wanting to spoil 5 gallons of good beer, I chose to play it safe. But when you boil crushed coffee beans, you get…coffee!

So in effect, I added a small pot of coffee to the second fermentation. And boy does it make its presence known when you taste it!

I like it. Probably because I’m choosing to think of it as a spiked ice coffee.

I think I’ll focus on good old fashioned ales with my next few brews. Well, a red ale and then a stout. But no added spices or coffee!