Two Brews in Secondary

Well, I racked my Nightshade Ale to secondary today. Fermented in primary nearly 8 days, and that's the longest fermentation I've had so far. It brewed incredibly vigorously for at least 3 or 4 of those days. It looked a deep reddish-purple in the carboy...yay for purple beer! It smelled a LOT like a tripel, which threw me off a bit. I wasn't really sure what I was expecting it to smell like, but I don't think I was expecting that. However, I love tripel's, so it can really only be a good thing.

My raspberry-chocolate stout has been sitting in secondary for about a week now, and I figure sometime in the next couple of day's I'll bottle it, so it'll have conditioned enough to be ready for Valentine's Day. I just dread the thought of bottling - I really want to start kegging, because it is SO much easier...and it's cool having beer "on tap" at my apartment. Bottling is just a pain, it's messy, and it takes up a whole afternoon.

With those two brews in secondary, the next question is what to brew next. I really want to brew an Imperial Stout, but it just doesn't seem that timely right now. Also, I know it would take a long time in secondary, and I don't think I want to take up one of my carboy's for that long. Maybe over the summer I'll throw a batch together, and let it sit all the way until winter.

A buddy of mine recently brewed the "Innkeeper" beer kit, from Northern Brewer. I guess it would best be classified as an amber, though the biscuit malt gave it a flavor I hadn't really tasted before, and I really liked it. That got me thinking, though, that I kind of just want to brew a good session beer - one that I can just pop open when I'm in the mood for a beer, one that I can have a few of when I have buddies over to hang out. I've been experimenting a lot and trying a bunch of unique things, but I'm thinking about going back to basics.

I like the amber ale I brewed for my first batch, so maybe I'll do something like that again, but switch it up a little bit. Three of my good friends near me all brew, and we kind of try to all brew different things. I really liked the beer my friend just brewed, but want to do something a little bit different. So we'll see. He also brewed a honey ale a couple of months back, and that was really good as well. I do like using honey as an ingredient, and it still makes an easy-drinking beer.

Hopefully I'll have some ideas for my next batch in a few days. Law school and working three jobs has kept me busy, to say the least, but this is one of the few things I do to relax.

Oh - almost forgot. I sampled my Chocolate Thunder porter again the other night, and it has really mellowed a LOT since the last time I tried it. There's still a little too much coffee/roasted bitterness, but it's much smoother overall, and more of the chocolate sweetness is coming through. If I do another chocolate-style beer, I'll probable cut the chocolate malt by quite a bit, since the baker's chocolate itself provides plenty of bitterness.

Nightshade Ale

So the massive "Blizzard of '09" struck today...dropping a whopping inch or so of snow. But, because that's unusual for North Carolina, classes were delayed. This meant I have nothing to do until three, and therefore figured I'd spend the morning brewing.

I racked my raspberry-chocolate stout to secondary today. It fermented really quickly in primary - I've never used yeast nutrients before, and the package said it would lead to a much faster, more vigorous fermentation, and it was right. I noticed activity within 4-5 hours, and it had subsided completely by this morning. I used raspberry extract to add the flavoring, and put that in my secondary fermenter with the wort. I've never used extract before, and when I smelled it, it definitely had somewhat of a medicinal scent to it - but I'm hoping that it will mellow out in the wort. We shall see.

Yesterday after work I picked up the ingredients for my next batch. I'm going with what I've referred to as my "Nightshade Ale". It's a blackberry-blueberry wheat. I didn't used to really like wheat beers too much, but they've grown on me, and I figured I may as well try to make one of my own. Here's the recipe:

6.6 lbs wheat LME
8 oz CaraPils
1 lb honey (at flameout)
.5 oz Tettnanger hops (boil)
.5 oz Sasz hops (aroma)
4 lbs blackberries
4 lbs blueberries

I think it should be interesting, at the very least. I hopped it less then I planned, since I want the fruit flavors to be apparent. What I'm really curious about is to see what color this ends up being. Purple beer is always cool :)

I also think I'm going to start kegging soon, since bottling has become a major pain. Hopefully I'll scrape together the funds and will be able to do it for one of these batches. I'd like to still bottle part of each batch, since it's nice to be able to bring beer over to my friends' places and whatnot.