Haven't been blogging, but I have still been playing brewmaster. I've tackled two recipes since the last update. The first was a double chocolate strawberry stout, and the second was a pumpkin spice ale.
The stout was quite the endeavor if I'm honest. And in case you're wondering, no, 5 gallons of beer, plus 6 pounds of reduced strawberries do not both fit in a 5 gallon carboy... I still have strawberry residue on my kitchen ceiling to prove that point...
In all though, the stout was pretty straightforward, and a bit lengthy at 2 months from brewing to enjoying, but it was the first time we actually experimented with our own recipe. The beer is very sweet, and definitely suited for dessert, but so are the chocolate covered strawberries we tried to mimic the taste of. My hydrometer broke for this one, but we estimate that the beer came out to about 8% ABV, due to the considerable amount of sugar, and added alcohol from chocolate and vanilla extracts.
The pumpkin spice ale was another kit beer, but served the purpose of being a good seasonal, and relatively easy. Due to the pumpkin shortage in our area, we used a fresh pumpkin instead of canned pumpkin puree, which will end up giving me a more authentic beer in my eyes.
It's currently carbing away in bottles, and at a typical 5.5% ABV, it will make a pretty good beer to enjoy as the Halloween decorations are slowly replaced by cornucopias and turkey dinners.
I purchased the BeerSmith software, to formulate my own recipes, and we'll be using it to design our next beer, which I believe will be an apple pie amber. I'm interested to see what we end up with after this one...
Final stats for the pumpkin spice ale:
OG - 1.052
FG - 1.010
ABV - 5.502
IBUs - 10.63
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