I recently brewed a brown ale, using almost the exact same recipe of the previous brown ale I made. That one was the 2nd beer I ever made, so it will be interesting to see if this one is much better, having honed my skills to a slightly higher degree. A few brewing techniques I used that the last brown ale was lacking:

- Yeast Starter ensuring perfect pitch rate

- “Fermentation Chamber” ensuring perfectly maintained fermentation temperature

- Water treatment (I still need to perfect this)

- Cold crashing prior to bottling (producing a more clear beer)

My process in general is also more refined and consistent, although nowhere near perfect.

This beer is intended to be an easy drinking brown ale, with very little bitterness and some good body and sweetness. It should be a crowd pleaser, as opposed to my last few which have been just for me. Black IPA, Belgian Saison and India Red Ale arent exactly for the uninitiated beer drinker.

Hopefully this turns out well – we will see in about 6 weeks.

Hello, Tim here. I’m back from the dead and blogging about beer again.

I bottled my Black IPA entitled Fear of the Dark. It’s a medium bitter hop bomb that looks almost like a stout, but with the body of an IPA and virtually no roasty stout flavor. Here are the details:

Original Gravity: 1.060

Final Gravity: 1.010

ABV: 6.5%

IBU: 65

Malts: American 2-row Pale, Carafa III Special, Crystal 60

Hops: Simcoe, Amarillo, Cascade, CTZ

I was inspired to make this beer when I had a Stone ‘Sublimely Self-righteous’ a couple months ago. Before that, I didnt like the black IPA style very much, but I guess I was just having bad examples of it. The Stone SSR is so amazing that the first thing I thought after trying it was “I need to brew this”. Actually I probably thought “I need more of this” first. But then, brewing it for sure.

I did some research on malts trying to find which malts would provide the darkest colors while imparting little to no roasty or harsh flavor. Carafa III Special is the go-to malt for this. Since it is de-husked it manages to impart a smoother and less detectable flavor while still providing the black color.

So far the samples tasted great, considering they were uncarbonated and still very young. I cant wait to try this in 3 or 4 weeks.

Stone Brewing Co. is possibly one of the greatest U.S. breweries around. Every beer they make is top notch. For example, their IPA.

This beer is one of the most highly rated IPAs around, and it stands up to the hype. Balanced bitterness, nice malty backbone, and in-your-face hop aroma and flavour. They’ve managed to create that nice sweet resiny mouth feel with a somehow dry-ish and not overly bitter finish.

Different hops tend to have different aroma and flavour characteristics, usually falling into different camps: fruity, spicy, or grassy/piney.  A lot of IPAs will be concentrated on one of those camps, and rightfully so. If you try to combine all different types of hops, for example some spicy hops and some citrus-y hops, you are likely going to get a muddled mess. Somehow, Stone has managed to just say ‘fuck it’ and combine all sorts of different hops with different characteristics and have made it work well.

I don’t know how they do it, but I guarantee you that very few brewers can replicate it.

Danielle and I got a rescue dog last Christmas. We think he is a Shepard/Collie cross but we don’t really know for sure.

He is an extremely timid dog as it’s believed he was treated very poorly and beaten as a puppy. We decided to name him Barley, after the single most important agricultural phenomena known to man…. heh.

This is a picture of Danielle bathing him, and he is hating every minute of it. It’s been kind of hard dealing with a dog that is scared of everything, but he is slowly getting better and better every day. He still walks away from me when I walk towards him and never comes when I call him, but there has been a lot of progress. He gets pretty rambunctious and playful with our cat now and gets really excited when either of us get home from work.

All in all, it’s been a difficult but fun and rewarding experience adopting a badly abused dog. Plus he’s pretty darn cute…

Oh, and the subject of this post is ‘Barley and Hops’, so…. I guess I will also update that I recently bought 8 ounces of Simcoe hops and 4 ounces of Amarillo hops!

Having a mother-in-law that just moved to Montana, I now have regular access to American craft beer that is either difficult or impossible to get in Canada. In this picture is the beer I brought back from one trip. Some I was specifically looking for, and some I just saw and thought I should try.

• Here is what I brought back:

- Deschutes Brewery: Hop Henge IPA, The Abyss, Obsidian Stout, Mirror Pond Pale Ale

- Sierra Nevada: 30th Anniversary Grand Cru, 30th Anniversary Barley Wine

- Bear Republic: Racer 5

- Flathead Lake Brewery: Centennial IPA

- Stone Brewery: Arrogant Bastard, IPA, Levitation

- Kona Brewery: Pipeline Porter

- New Belgium Brewey: Trippel, Snow Day Winter Ale, Ranger IPA, Fat Tire

All in all I am pretty pleased with this haul. There are a few breweries that I will still be on the hunt for next time but I am happy with this. The one I am easily most stoked about is The Abyss. I am going to see if my Mother-in-Law can bring some more when she comes to visit us in the near future.

That is all.