It had aged very well. The strength in alcohol (just over 8 percent) was well-hidden, with a slight warming in the finish being the only give-away indicator. The body was very full, but tasted pleasant. After it was first brewed, it tasted awesome. But its high finishing gravity made it a little bit too heavy. With this amount of age on the beer, the full body was pleasant and not too heavy. The other flavors have melded amazingly well, and the full body just makes it feel hearty and perfect for a cold winter’s night (not that it ever gets that cold here, but…).

Even after two years, there was a perceptible hop flavor and a decently balancing hop bitterness. Often volatile compounds that create hop flavor and aroma are driven off just from a year of aging, and bitterness also declines with lengthy aging. In the case of this beer, they simply smoothed the beer out.

All in all, an amazing end to this recipe. I’m quite happy that this beer turned out so nicely. I’m excited at the prospects of making an Imperial Stout using only grain and no extract. But first, I’ll be cooking up a sweet stout flavored with maple sugar and beechwood-smoked barley malt. I think this combination of flavors should make for a great winter beer.

Speaking of recent/upcoming brews, this year’s Holiday Lager has turned out decent, but it is still pretty green right now. I wish I had thought about making this beer earlier, because I think it will really need at least a month – perhaps three – of lagering. It’s in the fridge now, aging in the keg. I’ve had a few samples of it over the past few weeks, and it is pleasant. But it definitely tastes young.

Tonight we’ll be having a Lindeman’s Pêche for our New Year’s toast. My wife is pregnant, and my son is about to turn four – so I’ll be having most of the bottle all to myself. At least I’ll sleep well…

The next day I was planning to brew my fiftieth original recipe. Instead, I hung out around the house in a bathrobe all day. I finally got dressed and ready for the day – around 5pm. At that point it was too late to brew, so instead Malin and I opened our bottle of lambic…

Hump’s Fiftieth Brew

This first Sunday of 2008 – January 6^th – was brew day. Within twelve hours of pitching the yeast, a vigorous fermentation was underway. Just this past Wednesday (the 16^th) I racked the beer over a half ounce of Centennial dry hops. The beer has turned out more like an Imperial Brown Ale than an American Stock Ale – not hoppy enough. Brewing software predicts about 50 IBU. That may be accurate. The real thing it is missing is hop flavor. The beer could definitely have used more late hop additions… I already had a recipe for an Imperial Brown Ale (Hump’s Back-Breaking Brown) to which I’ve already made some amendments. It will be more like what I envisioned when I first formulated Hump’s Fiftieth Brew…

Three Floyds Behemoth and others…

Also this week I tried an extreme brew from Three Floyds: Behemoth – an American Barleywine that is 12% alcohol by volume. It was good, but I feel it is a bit overrated by the RateBeer.com community. I am very much looking forward to Three Floyds Dreadnaught. The bottle I have is a vintage, so it will likely have lost a lot of the in-your-face hop aroma and flavor that a fresh bottle would have. Nevertheless, I’m excited to try it. After all, it is the highest rated Imperial IPA on RateBeer. I also have another Imperial IPA to try: Left Hand Twin Sisters Double IPA. It isn’t nearly as highly rated as the Three Floyds beer, but I have yet to be let down by Left Hand.

Tonight, on the way home from work, I picked up another bottle of interesting beer. A friend of ours told us over the holidays that this beer was phenomenal. It is none other than Allagash Curieux – a Belgian Tripel that is aged in oak bourbon barrels. I was also stoked to see a couple of other Allagash specials/seasonals: Four and Black. Speaking of Allagash specials, I remember seeing Allagash Fluxus available at the Green’s on Ponce a couple of months ago, but I don’t know if it is still available there (likely not). It was a special beer brewed to inaugurate their new brewery – a strong golden ale brewed with rye and yarrow flowers. I’ll have to drop by there sometime and double-check.

Books and Radio

Not too long ago, Doug, the owner of the local homebrew store, turned me on to a great internet radio show: The Jamil Show. I’ve found the show so informative that I put on my Amazon wish list (and received for Christmas from my brother, Jake) a copy of Jamil Zainasheff’s most recent book (co-authored by John Palmer): Brewing Classic Styles. It is a really nice reference, but doesn’t have near the depth and content as does the radio show. Nevertheless, it is a valuable addition to the homebrew library.

More home brew, on its way

I’m hoping to go to the homebrew store this weekend. I’m not yet certain which recipe to brew. I’m almost at a point where the only unbrewed recipes I have laying around are for high gravity beers. But I do have a couple of reasonable strength beers (6% abv or less) in the pipe:

• Persuasive Porter – A nice robust porter. Originally, this recipe was based loosely on one of my first original recipes: Hump’s Pleasant Porter. But I’ve made some significant changes that reflect the considerable amount I’ve learned since that early recipe.
• Black Kriek – A brown porter made with a fair amount of cherries
• Smoked Maple Stout – Made with some maple syrup (not too much because it ferments so thoroughly and can leave the beer tasting a bit blunt) and some German rauch malt.
• Raspberry Porter – A robust porter made with a fair amount of raspberries
• Freshmaker Stout – I can’t make this one yet because I really don’t know how much mint extract I will need for five gallons of stout. But I may do some experimentation soon to find out.
• Vanilla Stout – Just what it sounds like.

I have others, but you may have caught on to a theme here: porters and stouts. Yes, it’s that time of year again, where we all get a hankering for something dark and full-bodied to help us survive the harsh winter.

At the moment I’m leaning most towards the first one, but who knows what I’ll brew!

The Saturday before Christmas, I kegged Hump’s Humble Monk Ale. On Sunday, Malin and I went to dinner with several friends of ours. My brother, Jake, also came along. Our destination was the Brick Store Pub in downtown Decatur. Among the brews we tried was a delectable Belgian seasonal: De Ranke Père Noël. It was a lovely, deep gold. Its flavor was balanced, slightly fruity, and crisp. The Brick Store had it on tap, and our group helped put it away (the keg ran dry before we left).

On Christmas day we ate potato croquettes, roast duck, and bacon-wrapped asparagus. This was paired with an inexpensive red wine. Alas, I had suitable brews to accompany this menu, but none that would be chosen over wine by my wife or my mother-in-law. Particularly good could have been the Belgian Pale Ale I just made – which had just reached a suitable level of carbonation on this day: the Humble Monk Ale.

The day after Christmas was a feast in Greenville, South Carolina – where I grew up and where my parents still live. We had a tasty feast that afternoon, and that evening my wife and I went out with some friends of ours that were in the vicinity. Part of that evening’s festivities included sampling some of the brews I recently acquired:

• Left Hand Oak-Aged Imperial Stout, 2004: Delicious. A fantastically smooth, roasty, strong, sweet stout. The wood added a delightful note of vanilla that was divine.
• Three Floyd’s Fantabulous Resplendence – X: A very nice barley wine. Like other great American barley wines, it was well hopped – almost too much at first. But as the palate acclimated itself to this big brews, all the flavors melded fantabulously.
• Courage Russian Imperial Stout, 1993: This is the last year that this beer was brewed. It was an interesting and memorable beer – but part of that memory are the off flavors of a beer that is a little past its prime. Particularly, there were sour flavors that were intriguing, but didn’t really seem like they belonged. Also, the sight of chunks of dead yeast, stained black from 15 years spent swimming in black beer, was less than stellar.

The next night, I hung out with my friend Jason and sampled some other tasty brews: Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale, Stone India Pale Ale, and Stone Double Bastard Ale.

We then exchanged some beers. In exchange for a case of home brew, I received several treats from Bell’s Brewery: Two Hearted Ale, Porter, and Kalamazoo Stout.

In addition to the above brews, I also got to taste New Glarus Dancing Man Wheat and Bell’s Batch 8000 Ale (both courtesy of CaptainCougar). And I’m still looking forward to the rest of the great stuff in my cellar: Three Floyd’s Behemoth, Three Floyd’s Dreadnaught, Dogfish Head Golden Shower (all three also from CaptainCougar), Lagunitas Kill Ugly Radio, Mikeller Black Hole, and Left Hand Twin Sisters Double IPA.

Stay tuned. Later this week (Friday) is another Session, and this month the topic is Doppelbock.