As regular readers of this blog know by now, I’ve been trying to broaden my tastes in the Queen of Holy Brews (coffee’s king, you know :-)), and to that end have been both sampling from a wide array of commercially-available micro-brews and experimenting a bit on my own (the molasses beer based on a Geo. Washingtom recipe was pretty good).
Well, last night, along with Son & Heir, I sampled the first batch of beer from my lil Mr. Beer mini-micro-brewery. I used one of their ingredient kits–the “California Pale Ale” mix–and he and I agreed wholeheartedly: Good Beer.
Now, this beer had a week-and-a-half in the fermentation keg and a full two weeks conditioning in the bottle before I refrigerated it.
Lovely deep golden color. Nice head. Good “hopsiness”. Clean taste. A little more body and just a tad more robust than Grolsh, but not a nicely bitter IPA. IOW, it was just about right to accompany last night’s turkey sandwiches and leftover Thanksgiving fixin’s.
Either tonight or tomorrow, I will start a batch of Wiezenbier (wheat beer) using a Mr. Beer mix. As I become more and more at ease with the process, I’d like to make some cider, some cherry wiezenbier and a few other niche flavors–perhaps an apricot cider/beer, who knows?
Oh, I used the “trub” from the molasses beer to make some whole wheat bread rolls the other day. Delish! The yeasts in the trub livened up nicely and though the bread was a tad heavy, that wasn’t all that bad; my whole wheat breads frequently are.