The Schitz! Barleywine Tasting

Tuesday was the one year anniversary of our cat, Schitzie's, death.

A little less than a year ago, I posted that I would brew up a big Barleywine in her memory. Well, it was brewed up quite a while ago, and has aged for almost a full year. Tuesday night, it was time to try it out.

I had tried The Schitz! Barleywine before Tuesday night though. However back then, the beer had only bulk aged for about a month in the secondary. It was extremely hot flavored, with a very prominent alcohol flavor. Thankfully, after almost a year the beer has really mellowed out.

The Schitz! turned out to be a pretty strange color. A medium brown color that has some strong red and orange highlights. This bottle, which was a large 16 ouncer, didn't have much head retention or carbonation in it. I'll need further research to see if this is just from this bottle, or for the entire batch of beer (oh no!).

The smell of The Schitz! was very malty and caramelly sweet with some fruity esters fairly prominent. The hop aroma and flavor have either aged out of the beer, or just were never present. There's no real way to know since I hadn't tried one till now. The flavor is very similar to the nose. Very malty with lots of caramel flavor and a bit of fruity esters. Overly not bad, but there should be more hop flavor for this to truly be considered an American Barleywine. It can still pretty much pass for an English Barleywine though.

This is still a very strong ale. At somewhere between 10-11% abv, this beer will kick in with just a quarter of it in you. I'll have to make sure to be careful around The Schitz!, she's definitely going to sneak up on me!

Finally! Jennifer's Cherry Wheat!

For anyone who's been following what's been in the Pipeline for the 9 months or so, you'll know that I've had "Jennifer's Cherry Wheat" in the "On Deck" position for quite some time now. Well, it's finally come to pass that this beer has been brewed!

I brewed it up on Saturday in between the USA demolishing Finland in the Semi-Finals of Olympic Hockey, and the USA losing a heartbreaker to Canada on Sunday.

The SWMBO has long loved Sam Adams' Cherry Wheat beer. It's been one of her favorites for quite sometime now and I told her that I'd do my best to brew her a clone, but with the incubation of the future brewer in her belly the beer had to be put on hold. But, since we're getting so close to the due date, I went ahead and brewed it up so it'd be ready by the time she'd be ready to partake again.

Here's the recipe:

5.5 lbs of Dry Wheat Malt Extract.

4 oz of Crystal 20L

.5 oz. of Magnum 11.2% at 60 min.

.25 oz of Cascade 5.2% at 10 min.

With 5 minutes left in the boil I added 1 pound of cherries that I pureed in the blender.

The Original gravity came out to 1.060. Beersmith had guessed 1.048 without considering the added sugars of the cherries. The true Original Gravity, and first Final gravity is anyone's guess though. That's because once the beer is finished in the primary, I'm going to throw in another pound of cherries in with the beer in the secondary. That will probably restart some fermentation with the additional sugars. So it'll be really hard to tell how much alcohol will be in this beer, and how sweet it will be. It could range anywhere from 5-7% ABV. Just don't tell the SWMBO, something like that might knock her socks off!

The only glitch in the recipe is that I had to use Wyeast American Ale I instead of the American Wheat Ale yeast I had originally planned for. The local homebrew store had run out the yeast I needed.

This will be the first beer I've made with real fruit made with it, and I'm hoping for a final product that doesn't taste like cherry cough syrup!

The Hop-Shot

Last night I bottled the Belgian IPA. For a few of the bottles, however, I tried something a little different.

I've been reading around about hop tea, and the added hop flavor that it can add to your beer. There's not a ton of information out there on the subject, but it's basically how it sounds. You steep hops in hot water to extract some flavor from the hops. Supposedly, this adds quite a bit of flavor and aroma, but since there is no boiling involved, no alpha acids are isomerized. So, no bitterness should be added to the tea.

Well, I decided to take this a wee step further. Instead of simply steeping the hops, or put them in a coffee maker, I threw some in my espresso maker. I figured, with the heat, and added pressure, there may be a bit more flavor drawn out. This created some fairly potent hop tea. I added about 4 'shots' of 'hop-spresso' to the secondary along with my hops for dry-hopping. This sat for a little over a week, and was bottled last night.

To take it one step further, a few bottles were set aside, and into them, I added just a bit of hop-spresso. Maybe half an ounce. These eight bottles will be a test to see if my 'hop-shot' idea works. Hopefully, they will just burst with hop flavor and aroma.

We'll see in about three weeks!

If anyone has any experience with hop tea, or putting it into beers, let me know. I'd love to hear how it went.

Finally!

Welp, this has taken a bit too long to get back to writing an entry here. However, not too terribly much has happened since then!

As a review:

1. I did get a new laptop for Christmas, so I don't have the excuse of not being able to write a blog entry just about anywhere, anymore.
   
   
2. I haven't done much brewing since the last entry. I've brewed once. I ended up trying out a "Belgian-style" IPA. I made it with tons of Saaz hops, and used Belgian Abbey II yeast from Wyeast labs. It's bound to be fruity, hoppy, and a bit banana-y. It's currently in the Primary, awaiting me to stop being lazy and put it in the secondary and dry-hop it some.
   
   
3. The Canes are still hovering around last place in the NHL, however, there has bit a bit of excitement lately. A few weeks ago JR made the decision to take away the Captaincy from Rod Brind'Amour and give it to Eric Staal. This caused a minor rift in Caniac Nation of those who agreed with JR, and those who thought Roddy should have remain captain until his eventual retirement.
   
   Honestly, I agreed with the move. Brindy had become a shadow of himself for the past 2 seasons and has always been a "lead by example" captain. Well, he can still lead by example in the weight room, but his on ice performance inspired no one. The team next season will be comprised of youngsters and it will need a younger captain to lead it.
   
   Since the change, the Canes went on a tear. They won 5 of 6 games, including a 4 game win streak. Eric Staal has especially responded to being given the captaincy. He's been a scoring machine since, including a hat trick his first game as captain.
   
   The news as of late in the impending Trade Deadline and Winter Olympics Roster Freeze. Both could mean big time trades for the Canes. Whitney, Cullen, Corvo, Wallin, and Walker are just a few of the players the Canes hope they can get a return for. Hopefully, they can at least get something.
   
   
4. The SWMBO's finally in the third trimester. The Home Stretch! Just another two months and some change left! We're in the home stretch, and believe me, the SWMBO can feel it. Unfortunately, we've still got plenty of work to do before we're ready for the little assistant brewer to pop out.

That's it for now, I'll try to keep a bit more updated. Especially with how the Canes' trading goes here in the coming weeks.

Sunset/Sunrise

Is this a sunrise on a new start or a sunset on the season? In a way it's both for me.

This will more than likely be a lost season with the Canes. No one can possibly come up with all the right reasons for how and why the Carolina Hurricanes have performed so poorly since the start of the season. Nothing can go right for this team, when the sky was the limit at the end of last season and the beginning of this season. Records have been broken this season, but none of them good. The only bright side to this season, will be the 1st round (possibly the 1st overall!) pick in the upcoming entry draft this summer. If only this season had been last...

And here's my beautiful sunrise! My assistant brewer in the making is a Girl! The mini-Caniac gear has already been looked at and appropriated for. The only problem is that she's not due until the middle of April. Well after the Canes' season will be done. So she won't be able to really fit into the really small stuff. We'll have to wait to get some bigger stuff once next season begins.

No matter how this season ends, at least I know that I'll have the prettiest mini-Caniac in the stands next season!

Habs Slight Preview!

This past Sunday, the 'Canes actually won a game. Granted, it took them to the shootout, blew a 4-1 lead, and basically gave the Wild the game after the 2nd period. But they won. It's 2 points. I guess.

But they really, really tried to lose. They really did. They were this close! We almost could've had a record losing streak. But no. Minnesota just had to suck just slightly less. Just slightly.

Tonight, we roll into Montreal to take on a slightly better Habs team than last year. That's still miles ahead of us. Check out Four Habs Fans for the complete breakdown on how the Canes will be raped by the Habs, and the strippers in Montreal.

The Birth of the Pint-o-Lantern and Dobleve Te Effe Canes?

Not all Jack-o-Lanterns are born at the same level of awesome-ness.

This was my attempt at creating the world's first (I'm assuming so, because I never found any on google) Pint-o-Lantern. Through hours of hard work, I tried to recreate the illusion of a pint glass on a lit up pumpkin. Not the easiest of accomplishments. I did have lots of fun with it. Here's the work in progress:

I started out with a fairly tall pumpkin, and drew (to the best of my limited ability) a pint glass with a heavy head upon it.

Next, I "chipped" out the beer colored part by cutting out about .5-1 inch of the pumpkin shell. This was to ensure that the beer was lit up, but not super bright like an open hole.

Then, I put a full hole in where the head of the beer would be to make sure it was as bright, or as white as possible. I also dug the outline of the glass a bit deeper than the beer, so that it would shine a bit brighter than the beer. So I ended with this.

Now for the big downer. What is up with the Canes? No seriously, what is up with the Canes? They've lost 10 games in a row. They have not won a single game in a month. A MONTH! Plus, it looks like there's no end in sight, at least if they keep up with the way they are playing.

Yeah, they're playing the Maple Leafs on Friday, but honestly, the Canes are the absolute worst team in Hockey right now. And who would have thought that after last season?

So the question of everyone's mind is: Who's to blame? Well, that can pretty much be placed on everyone.

1. Jim Rutherford. He's now the manager of the oldest team in the NHL. He decided he wanted his younger stars to stay in the AHL one more year, even after a very good training camp, and instead signed older more obscure "veterans." He's still paying Peter Laviolette to not coach this team. He signed Mo to a three year deal after catching lightning in a bottle last "half-season." So of course there is no way Mo is going anywhere. JR is not going to pay 2 coaches not to coach, and then have to pay a 3rd coach to do a job. And therein lies the problem with JR being a "co-owner" of the Canes. He pretty much can never be fired or held accountable for his decisions.
2. Mo. You can shuffle lines all day long but it doesn't mean you can force chemistry. Plus, how about you play the younger guys that are called up. They're actually giving an effort and trying to win games. Stop playing your little favorites to the people who are under-achieving. Let the players earn their top spots.
3. Eric Staal. You needed to recover from your pseudo-injury you've had all season, instead of playing at 75%. You're no good to anyone if you aren't up to your normal level. You're taking up a roster spot that someone useful can take. Don't try to be an ironman just to hold that record, if you are hurt, take the game off.
4. The Carolina Hurricanes. Step up and play hockey. Get your crap together, and give a 60 minute effort. You're better than last place in the NHL. You're better than the Leafs. Much better.

Now show it.