Cream Ale, Brown Ale, and Blackout

Sparging a pale ale we brewed for a co-worker.  We utilize a continuous sparge for our beers, as opposed to batch sparging used by many homebrewers.

Busy, busy, busy....
Since we brewed the second version of a brown ale, we've brewed a few more things that are coming along nicely.

First, we've added a new beer to our line-up.  It's a cream ale, that's perfect for summer.  It's clean and crisp with subtle malt and hop presence, and at just under 5% ABV, you can a have a few without worries.  For those wondering, Cream Ales are an ale version of an American lager.  They were originally brewed by ale brewers to compete with the lager brewers who were dominating the pre-prohibition US beer market.  Some were brewed with ale yeasts and fermented cool, and others were made with lager stains and fermented closer to ale temps.  Ours is kept traditional to style and is made up of 6-row malt and flaked corn, lightly hopped and fermented with a blend of ale and lager yeasts to create a well-attenuated light beer with a smooth mouthfeel.  Although the name for this one is still pending, it'll be available for summer supper club and beyond.

Next, we brewed a modified version of our signature beer, Blackout.  For this, I basically took the beer in a different direction with the same goal in mind.  Fermentation is winding down, after which I'll add vanilla beans and condition it til December.  We'll then do a side by side comparison and go from there.  We have been very happy with Blackout and it's current recipe, but I got an idea and ran with it.  We'll see if it was a good one.

Finally, this past weekend, I brewed a pale ale for a coworker.  We've brewed one before for him and he was very happy with the resulting beer and feedback from his friends, so he came back for another party he's throwing.  Keeping in mind that the pale ale we've brewed in the past is not part of our regular line-up, I made some tweaks and brewed up a batch for him.  This was a pretty basic hoppy pale ale.  A gist of 90% american 2-row and 10% medium crystal, and hopped with Centennial for bittering and a 50/50 mix of Amarillo and Simcoe whole leaf hops late in the kettle and for dry hopping, this will be a beer that will please most anyone.  It's doing it's thing in the fermentor, anxiously awaiting it's dry hop as we speak.

Brown Ale Brew Day

With the first run of our nut brown ale on tap, some minor tweaks were in order.  I upped both the chocolate and victory malts slightly.  There were a couple of reasons for this particular modification.  The first was to get a slightly more pronounced nuttiness and the second was to get it a tad darker without upping the crystal.  I also thickened the mash a tad, as I've found that, at least for our brewery, a thicker mash yields better results for our low to moderate gravity beers.  I brewed the modified version this weekend and am excited to taste the final product.  Preliminary showings indicate a winner. Version one was a good beer.  Version two will be a great beer.