Brew day

I spent another wonderful day brewing yesterday again with my brother Eric. We brewed up a batch of Belgian IPA. This recipe was modeled after the February club shop brew called Falcon - Belgique, which was led by Jim McGowan.

I was pleasantly surprised that my brother liked this style of beer, and suggested we brew it. It has a load of hops, which he is normally not too fond of, and was fermented with Wyeast 1214 yeast. Of course there was a good malt backbone to this beer too.

Our target gravity was 1.072, but we ended up with only 1.064 which was okay. Hard to easily convert a 32 gallon recipe to 6 gallons, even with Promash. I will have to play around with the recipe to up the gravity a bit more.

Scott Wyse and Carrie Love also stopped by to hang out with us and drink beer while we brewed. That added a real party atmosphere to the brew day. They are always fun to be around.

Eric is getting more interested in the brewing process, and he insisted on doing most of the work under my direction. All grain brewing is time consuming, but worth the effort. It brings tears to my eyes that my little brother is becoming a budding all grain home brewer, and that he is learning to appreciate good beer.

Eric is so excited about brewing and learning about different beers now, that he wanted to create a recipe based on Newcastle with honey and orange peel. That made my heart swell even more with pride.

I had him read the style guidelines for a Northern English brown ale, and guided him along in Promash to create the recipe with him. This will probably be the next batch of beer that we brew up together in a week or so. Eric is very excited about it. He said that when it was ready, he wants me to take it to a club meeting for everyone to try. I will try to get him to come to the meeting as well so he can help present it.

I think that I have a new Maltose Falcon in the making in my brother Eric.

Cheers!

Diane