Quad Pack

An update on my brewery status: I just added 4 new fermentors.  To be fair each of these is a 1 gallon jug so my brewing output will probably not be increasing along with the number of openings.  I do have some exciting ideas for these small jugs including beer experiments, other types of fermentation and more sour and brett beer blends.  A few items that are high on the list:

• Blending sour beers - A blend of my very sour brown with my young lambic or other future sours
• Bretted Saisons - Creating a basic Saison and bottling 1 gallon straight with the other 4 split onto different secondary yeasts/blends including a sour blend, BKYeast C2 and the dregs of a Saison de Lente bottle, and another might receive a different Saison yeast or a culture of lactobacillus)
• Wine - I am still yet to have made a wine and a recent return trip to Napa has me wishing to experiment, perhaps with a fruit wine or small batches of grape wine
• Mead - Similar to wine it would seem much easier to begin my experimentation with Mead in small containers, especially with the numerous ideas I have for spices/fruit/yeast/blends/oak that I would like to try
• Cider - I've only made one to date but would like to try many of the similar additions as with mead, and would like to have the ability to blend with mead/wine/beer without having too much.
• Spiced Beer - While my Here Be Dragons! spiced Scottish ale was largely unsuccessful spicing a beer (possibly a porter or dubbel) in secondary with a number of different flavors that I have wanted to try out seems like a much better idea with one gallon rather than a full 5 gallons.  Some flavor profiles I've been considering trying out include Speculaas (ginger, cardamom, white pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove), BBQ (brown sugar, cayenne, smoked paprika, black pepper), sage (maybe with sage honey as well) and caraway+honey
• Dry hopped - Making a pretty standard recipe and dry hopping with different hops either 4 American types (e.g. Amarillo, Cascade, Citra, Warrior) or 4 non-traditional/world hops (e.g. EKG, Saaz, Sorachi Ace, Mr. Rainier) could make for a very interesting pale ale experiment

Lots of exciting ideas, some of which I'll surely attempt and others I may never get around to.  Experimentation with both classic ideas and entirely new ones is all about what this blog is about, searching for Good Beer in any way possible.

Spiced Belgian Tasting

Haven't done a tasting in a while and just popped open my strong/spiced Belgian ale.

A- Cloudy amber with a large head that fades slowly leaving no lacing.  Pretty bubbles in the tan head.

S- Spice, clove and cardamom, lead the way with some caramel, prune and fig notes.

T- Like the nose the spice dominates with clove dominating but a mild toasty flavor and some fig/cherry fruit also in the mix. Finishes long and dry with a bit of tang and hops.

M- Fairly thin, accentuated by the fairly high carbonation.  The carbonation gives it a bit of a bite on the dry finish.

O- A quite pleasant beer with the Rochefort yeast giving strong spice notes that are even more accentuated by the additions.  The wine has faded entirely giving no noticeable contribution.  This one wasn't what I was going for with the beer and the carbonation could be dialed back some, but still very enjoyable.  The alcohol also really sneaks up on you in this one. Very strong but no alcohol presence until you feel it all over.