Iron Spike Blonde Ale

I apologize that it's been so long since my last post. Things have been a little crazy, what with the end of the term, being out of commission for a week with the chicken pox, and deciding to graduate early and apply to join the navy among other things.

So here, without further ado, here's my next review!

BEER: Iron Spike Blonde Ale (Railway City Brewing Company, St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada)

ABV: 4.3%

SERVED: 500mL brown bottle (single purchased at the LCBO), poured into a pint glass

APPEARANCE: Dark golden colour. Small amount of thin white head, and what little there is dissipates VERY quickly.

AROMA: Faint malty smell to this beer, with an even fainter hoppy note, so faint that it's almost not even there... there's really not much aroma to this beer at all.

TASTE: The first thing to hit my taste buds was... nothing. It was as if I was drinking water. The aftertaste finally starts to hit, but actually reminds me a lot of Lakeport or some other cheap, mass-produced beer. It almost tastes a little stale.

CONCLUSION: I was totally unimpressed with this beer. The label looked kind of interesting, and I do usually enjoy ales, and of course I'm all for supporting the local microbreweries, so I thought I'd give it a try, but it's not worth your money. I'm pretty sure this beer IS stale. The label says "NOT PASTEURIZED - KEEP REFRIGERATED @ 40F (5C) to 45F (6) and Serve within 45 days. (As if you could wait that long when it tastes this good.)" I chuckled at that last past, seeing as how it actually tastes pretty gross. Then it goes on to say it was brewed fresh, with a date stamp saying "J102009". Which "J" are they talking about? June? July? January? No matter which one it might be, it's still past the recommended maximum 45 days storage. So, perhaps if this beer were fresh, it might taste a little better. As it stands though, I can't recommend it. 2/10

Duchy Originals Organic Ale

Alright, I know I promised part two of my IPA reviewing, but I felt like giving this one a try and had to share it with you. Don't worry, I'll get to the second IPA soon! This one's kind of interesting though. It's from Duchy Originals, a company started in 1990 by Prince Charles, HRH The Prince of Wales. The company sells all kinds of organic, sustainable foods and drinks, including this ale. The company that actually brews the beer though is Wychwood, which I recognized as the producer of the very tasty Hobgoblin ale. If you haven't already tried it, you should give that one a go too. I love it. I have a bottle right now, so maybe I'll review that one soon as well.

BEER: Duchy Originals Organic Ale ("Brewed to Duchy Originals own recipe by Wychwood Brewery Co. Ltd., Witney, Oxfordshire, Great Britain")

ABV: 5.0%

TYPE: Organic Ale

SERVED: 500mL brown bottle (single purchased at the LCBO) poured into a pint glass.

APPEARANCE: Absolutely beautiful ruby colour. Creamy reddish-white head that lingers for a few minutes before mostly dissipating, leaving a thin layer on top.

AROMA: This one smells fantastic. The malty aroma punctuated by the smell of hops is utterly tantalizing to the senses. I already like it and I haven't even tasted it yet! Mmm!

TASTE: Very nice. Subtle hop flavour, giving a nice balanced bitter flavour to the beer. The barley malt flavour is excellent, and lingers well from sip to sip, leaving you wanting more and more. I am thoroghly impressed with this beer. 9.5/10!

Review: Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA

This is part one of a two-part feature on IPAs. Found a couple recently that I really liked, and want to share with you. This first one is the 60 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head brewery of Milton, Delaware, USA.

BEER: Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton, DE, USA)

ABV: 6.0%

TYPE: India Pale Ale

SERVED: 355mL brown longneck bottle (6-pack bought at the LCBO) poured into a pint glass

APPEARANCE: Beautiful deep golden colour. Creamy white head that lingers well in the glass.

AROMA: Unmistakeable intense floral aroma of hops is the first thing to hit your nose. It's clear that this is a true, heavily-hopped IPA beer.

TASTE: Powerful and slightly bitter hoppy taste, with the distinctive oily mouthfeel of hops as well. Very nice malty flavour in the middle- to after-taste. Quite pleasant.

OVERALL: This is a fantastic example of an India Pale Ale. For anyone who enjoys Keith's and wants to know what a REAL India Pale Ale tastes like, give one of these a try. Incredible, and very drinkable. I'd highly recommend it. Due to the stronger flavour in this beer, it would go best with a stronger-flavoured food, like a strong cheese. 9.5/10

Homebrew Batch 3

Well, I think I've finally brewed something approaching success! This time I used distilled water that I bought at the grocery store to make absolutely sure that there was no impurities in the water. Still seemed to have a very minor problem getting the machine to seal properly, but the leak seemed to be smaller this time than during the last batch, and didn't really seem to affect the beer too much. It seemed to be able to hold 10 PSI of pressure, but no more... while it's supposed to ferment at 15 PSI, and my first batch hit 16 PSI. Like I said though, it didn't seem to affect the beer too much this time.

TYPE: Beer Machine Golden Lager

APPEARANCE: Appropriately golden in colour, just as an American lager should be. Relatively clear. Not a lot of bubbles due to the ongoing problems with the machine seals, but there are some bubbles. This one just managed to get a very light carbonation. Nice creamy-looking head, but it dissipates quickly.

AROMA: Really not a whole lot to smell with this one. Very faint smell of an American-style lager, mixed with a very faint smell of an apple cider.

TASTE: After 4 days of conditioning in the fridge, this one tasted strangely like weak apple cider. Given a few extra days to condition though, the cider taste is almost entirely subdued, but not quite. Replacing it is a flavour of what I'd almost call a slightly weak, faintly sweet lager.

OVERALL: This is the closest thing to success I've gotten out of my beer machine in three attempts so far. I do think that the distilled water made a big difference, as the sour taste that reared its ugly head in my last two batches was pleasantly absent this time. I believe that the faintly sweet taste in this beer was likely a small amount of the malt that didn't get totally fermented. After I had sealed the machine to start the fermentation, I noticed a tiny amount of the brewer's yeast that had clumped up and remained in the packet. Not much, but enough perhaps to prevent 100% conversion of the malt to CO2 and alcohol, which would definitely explain the faint sweetness. But I think if I try to get the machine to actually seal properly again for the next batch, and use distilled water again, I should have a winner.

Review: Upper Canada Dark Ale

Well, I've been really busy over the last while so I haven't had time to try brewing another batch of beer yet. I ended up using a good amount of the Irish Stout from the last batch as a cooking beer, a role in which it performed fairly well. The last half of the batch I finally dumped out, and hopefully I'll soon have another batch on the go.

But now, for something a little different: my first beer review on this blog!

BEER: Upper Canada Dark Ale (Upper Canada Brewing Company, Guelph, Ontario, Canada)

ABV: 5%

TYPE: dark ale

SERVED: 341 mL brown longneck bottle (12-pack bought at the Beer Store), poured into a pint glass.

APPEARANCE: Dark amber in colour. Slight creamy head on top which lasts surprisingly long before eventually dissipating.

AROMA: Delicious malty smell, with a hint of hops. Faint smell of the alcohol in the background.

TASTE: I can definitely taste the malt in this one, and it's very tasty. Also the slight hoppy bitterness, with the accompanying slightly oily mouthfeel characteristic of hops. Very pleasant aftertaste which lingers from sip to sip.

OVERALL: Very tasty and drinkable dark ale, which would go especially well with hamburgers or any other red meat. This was my first time trying this beer, and I'd definitely buy it again. I'd give it a solid 7/10.

Batch Two

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I've been pretty busy lately and just haven't gotten to the blog. In any case, I've made a second batch of beer. This time I tried the Irish Stout, again from The Beer Machine company.

During the brewing process, I had a lot of trouble with the machine's seals. There was a slow leak somewhere that I couldn't seem to fix. As a result, it couldn't maintain more than 4 or 5 PSI all through the fermentation phase, and then after I moved the machine to the fridge when I was supposed to, it wouldn't maintain any pressure for more than half an hour or so. I thought at first that it was the seal around the top cap, but it might be the seal around the carbonation unit as well. I couldn't quite figure it out, and it was a little frustrating.

Anyways, on to the tasting.

TYPE: Beer Machine Irish Stout

APPEARANCE: Very dark, pretty much black, like you would expect a stout to look. Because of the problems with the seal, the beer was completely flat, so the beer didn't bubble at all, and what little head there was dissipated quickly.

AROMA: Smelled faintly sweet, like molasses, as you'd expect a stout to smell. Still an ever-so-slight sour smell though. (But not nearly as bad as that American Lager first batch).

TASTE: The first time I tasted it, as the beer hit my tongue, I got the initial flavour more of a dark lager, not heavy like a stout should be. Vague molasses flavour and a bit of hops. But then the sourness hit, although like the aroma, the sourness wasn't as strong as with the first batch. Also, no carbonation bubbles, as mentioned before. As the beer warmed up though, the sourness seemed to subdue slightly, and made it almost drinkable... as far as slightly-sour-beer-flavoured-flat-water goes.

OVERALL: I still wouldn't classify this batch as a success. An improvement, yes, but not a success. I called the customer support line for The Beer Machine and they said that it's possible the water I'm using might not be good enough. Even though it is municipal tap water, which they recommend to use, I don't know how old the pipes are which bring the water to my apartment, nor the actual sink itself. So while I'm sure it's safe to drink (I've been drinking the water for 3 years and I'm still fine), it could be just off enough to sabotage my beer. They recommended next time I either boil the water for 10 minutes and then let it cool, or buy distilled water. I might go for the distilled water to see if it really makes a difference.

Day 10: Time to Taste!

Thursday, March 5th, 2009: It's been 10 days in total since I started my first batch of home-brew beer. It's been conditioning in the fridge for 5 days now. That means that it's supposed to be ready, and time to give it a taste!

TYPE: Beer Machine American Lager (note that the mix arrived with a small slit and a second small hole in the bag... I was told that it would still be usable, but I had my doubts)

APPEARANCE: Cloudy. Imagine drinking a glass of milk, then without rinsing the glass, pouring yourself a glass of apple juice. Actually, that's kind of the colour that the beer has as well. The head seems to linger much longer on top than you would expect a normal commercial lager to.

AROMA: It smells a bit like beer, but... sour. And not a "mmm... sour patch kids!" kind of sour. It's more like "oh no I dropped a lemon into my beer and left it overnight!" Not good. Not much in the way of noticeable hops aroma at all.

TASTE: The first thing to hit my tongue is an intense sourness. That quickly gives way to a taste more of what you would expect from a Budweiser or something, followed by an aftertaste that just feels wrong somehow. The best way I can describe it is Corona left out in the sun for a couple of days... mixed with wood shavings. Sour wood shavings. I really have no good way to describe a beer that tastes this BAD.

OVERALL: It's safe to say that this first batch was a complete failure. I have no doubt now that the beer mix was tainted by outside contaminants as a result of the holes in the bag. I don't care what the lady on the customer service line said, that mix was no good. I'll stick to perfectly sealed mixes from now on. Bottom line... I wouldn't make anyone drink something this terrible. This batch is getting dumped. I'm going to completely re-sterilize the machine, and start either today or tomorrow on a batch of Irish Stout, which conveniently should be ready just in time for St. Patty's Day!

Day 5: Into the Fridge!

Saturday, February 28th, 2009: The pressure in the beer machine has dropped down to 15 PSI, and the bubbles have begun to slow quite a bit. I'm pretty sure this means that it has completed fermentation. The instructions said to pour a small sample at this point, and said that if it isn't sweet, then fermentation is complete. I did that, and the sample was, as expected, quite cloudy. This is due to the fact that the conditioning phase has yet to occur. I waited for the head to settle a little and then gave it a taste, and it was a little... sour. Sort of like strange, sour Budweiser. Not good. The booklet states that a sour taste can be imparted by bacteria growing in the beer, which produces an acid. This can happen when the brewing environment is not totally sterile... which may well have been caused by using the beer mix which had a slit in the bag. The lady on the customer service line said that it should still be ok, but I had wondered about this. Turns out my fears may be true. Oh, well... I put the beer machine in the fridge to let it go through the conditioning phase, which removes the haziness and allows the CO2 to absorb into the beer. This takes 4-5 days. I'll sample the beer again once this is complete, and if it still tastes sour, I'll know why.

As a side note, I had a bit of trouble getting the beer machine to even FIT in the fridge. It was too big to fit in my little beer fridge at all, so I planned on putting it on the top shelf of the main fridge. The only problem with this was that when I'd put the beer machine in the fridge before I started all this to see if it would fit, I hadn't attached the pressurization unit yet. With that on, the beer machine now requires 13 inches of clearance... and was now too tall. So, I had to make some less-than-optimal adjustments to the shelf positioning to make the machine fit.

Day 4: Fermentation Continues

Friday, February 27, 2009: The fermentation stage is continuing. The bubbles of CO2 rising out of the PCV are continuing at the same rate. The documentation says that the fermentation stage is supposed to take between 3-5 days, so it should be ready to move on to the next stage by tomorrow at the latest I would hope. The waiting really is the hardest part!

Day 3: Steady as She Goes

Thursday, February 26th, 2009. I checked the beer machine this morning and there's nothing much new to report. The bubbles are still steadily rising out from the PCV, so that means the fermentation is still going strong. The documentation said that phase normally takes 3-5 days, so I guess it could be any day now then. I'll know that fermentation is slowing when the bubbles of CO2 escaping begin to slow down. Seems like the layer of foam on top of the beer is a tiny bit thicker now... not quite half an inch though.

Day 2: It's Alive!

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009:

I checked on my beer machine about 9:45 this morning, and it's looking good so far. A thin, maybe quarter-inch layer of foam had appeared on top of the water, and the meter was showing a reading of 11 PSI so far.

Another peek after class, about 1pm. The meter's up to about 15 PSI now, which the instructions listed as the normal maximum operating pressure. This is when the PCV (Pressure Control Valve) is supposed to begin releasing excess CO2 produced by the fermentation. I poured a bit of water onto the cap, as it says to do in the book. I start watching for the bubbles rising up through the water out of the PCV, but nothing yet.

By 1:30pm the pressure is up to about 16 PSI, but there's now a slow, steady stream of bubbles rising up out of the PCV. Looking good. A quick peek half an hour later shows the pressure holding steady at 16 PSI, and the bubbles still popping out through the water. I'm excited! Only 6 to 9 more days until I'm going to be able to taste my first home brew!

The Odyssey Begins...

After doing a bit of research into home brewing beer, I finally decided to order some equipment and give it a try. I ordered a brewing kit (a Beer Machine Model 2000) from http://www.beermachine.ca/, and it arrived a week or so ago. I didn't really have time to do anything with it at the time, as I was heading home for a few days over reading week. When I got back, I got started.

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009:
Having already completed the pressure test, I read over all the provided documentation again and proceeded to sterilize the beer machine. As I was rinsing it out afterwards though, the feed tube fell out of the spigot. Oops. I guess I was sterilizing a little too vigorously. So I had to take the whole thing apart again, re-insert the feed tube, and put the machine back together again. And then sterilize it... again. I tried to pressurize the machine slightly so that I could open the tap to sterilize the feed tube and tap itself, only to realize that when I reassembled the machine, it hadn't sealed properly. I was starting to get a little frustrated by now. Tried taking it apart and reassembilng it again but couldn't for the lift of me get the main seal to fit in properly. I left it alone and went to bed.

Monday, February 23rd, 2009:
Back to classes again. After I got home, I tried fitting in that pesky main seal again, but to no avail. About half the seal would go in properly, but the rest refused. Is home brewing supposed to be this frustrating? I went to go play some Starcraft. Maybe the seal will work next time.

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009:
Success! I finally got the seal to go in properly again. I sterilized the machine, and found that it was pressurizing just fine. Excellent. Now to start brewing! The machine came with an American Lager beer mix, and I had also ordered a special 3-pack Piggy Back Special (1 each of Czech pilsner, normal pilsner, and a porter), as well as a 3-pack of Irish stout. The 2-pack of Scotch Ale that I ordered is temporarily out of stock, so they're going to ship me that along with the bottling attachment for the beer machine as soon as they become available, estimated to be mid-March. Anyways, I decided to go for the American Lager first. That mix seemed to have split slightly in transit. When I called customer support they said that it should still be ok, but even so, if it's split, I'd rather make it up sooner than later. Besides, it'll give me a chance to figure out what I'm doing without risking screwing up on one of the (likely) tastier flavours, such as the stout!

Anyways, I followed the instructions, partially filling the sterilized beer machine with water, then opened the beer mix and poured in the contents (malt powder & hops). Some of the powder escaped from the slit in the bag as well as from a smaller, previously unseen slit and made a bit of a mess, but I hope that shouldn't affect things too much. After emptying the bag, I cleaned up the spilled powder, topped up the beer machine to the fill line with water, and put on the cap (the defoamer cup, pressure control unit, and the cap itself). I cleared out a spot in the bottom of the pantry/hall closet, and put the machine down there out of the way, sitting on a little waterproof tray I made. Now we wait.

Welcome!

Welcome to The Beer Connoisseur! I hope to pass on a little about my favourite beverage through this blog. I hope the beer fans out there can appreciate my thoughts and opinions, and for those of you who for some crazy reason don't like beer or don't know much about it, maybe I can convince you to see the light (or the dark... mmm Guinness...). Enjoy!