Mid Sized Batch Sour

I have noticed that major breweries who have a souring program have a good solid sour base beer. For example Crooked Stave has their petite sour which has been released as Pure Guava(0% Guava), Black Berry and Unflavored. Upland releases several lambics fruited with different fruit added to them. For a recent interview at Embrace The Funk, Jackie O's head brewer Adam Ebe revealed he uses their raspberry wheat as a base for sours.

I want to develop a good base sour, something that will sour up and yield a good balance of sour and funk.

(read more after the break.)

Cascade, Citra, & Nelson Sauvin Double IPA

It looks a bit like
hoppy milk?

My desire is to make a strongly hopped IPA to get ready for spring, and to give brewing hoppy beers another try now that my small batch process has been refined a bit. My model comes from a beer I had before my trip to California. I enjoyed my can of Heady Topper from The Alchemist Brewery; it has a punch you in the face hop aroma, great hop flavor, and lower than expected bitterness.

I've read many secrets to making a great hoppy beer: one secret is hop bursting, another is recipe formulation, and the other is an aroma rest. Hop bursting is the term given to moving most of your hop schedule  into the last 20 minutes of the boil. An aroma rest is allowing the wort to cool naturally for a time after adding the flame out hops but before you engage the chiller. The final piece of the puzzle is a great recipe. My go to source on this topic is Vinnie from Russian River. He invented the DIPA! Following his tips in recipe formation is like following a Van Gogh paint by numbers.

(read more after the break.)

Review: Hibiscus Pale Ale

Hibiscus Pale Ale

Appearance: Clear and red, deep and dark until you hold it to the light when it reveal its copper body.

Aroma: Hops, bitter American. Palisade wasn't the floral potpourri I was hoping for, the hibiscus isn't apparent in the aroma, maybe a hibiscus dry hop.

Flavor: Bitter and Tart, Good. The balance is off though, the bitterness and the tartness are off. Next time, more hibiscus less bitterness.

Mouth: The mouth-feel is good. Nice prickly carbonation. The beer is smooth and not too thin.

Overall: It's okay. Needs tweaking to be right. I see potential. Hibiscus soda was super tart and cranberry like, the tea I made was very tart, the beer was not. The interplay of hops and tartness from the hibiscus could be a neat interplay in a 'clean' beer because the hibiscus brings the tartness normally contributed by the lacto.

Cranberry Blossom Mead

I like the idea of a mead. I grew up eating honey, I would put honey on everything until my parents stopped buying it for me because natural sugar became bad for you. The 80's were a magical time.

All of the meads I've had are far too sweet or boozy. It's hard to find a good table mead. There is not a good source of table meads as far as I know. Honey bourbon, honey beer, high alcohol meads, and honey wine; Never table meads though. What I'm hoping to get is a soft floral honey flavor with a spritzy carbonation level.

(read more after the break.)