Homebrew Wednesday #5 Belgium Beer Tasting

Awhile back Sue and I went to Bravo Beer which is a restaurant located in the fancy-schmancy new department store, Top City. Supposedly they had over a hundred different kinds of beer and also served food. Score! I had to check it out, so one night the two of us went over and gave it a try.

My advice is stick to the appetizers and avoid the Gnocci (blech!), and, of course, slam as many beers as you can. You'll spend some coin to try a few different beers, at least 150NT or more per beer, but it's worth it if you want to get a good spread of suds.

I've always been a fan of Belgian style beers, particularly Hoegaarden, and I was excited to work my way through a couple bottles of new stuff at Bravo. The beer cooler itself was quite impressive and actually made it harder to make a choice as I could look at all the beers at once. Kid in a candy store, I was.

Once I selected a beer someone from the staff grabbed it for me and also snagged an appropriately branded and shaped glass for that beer. Nice.

Here are my notes for each beer that I tried.

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Corsendonk- Tasty but still unsure how much i like it. Decent mouthfeel and excellent lacing that looks like bubble wrap. Nicely malty but the hoppiness is a little off-putting; not quite bitter with strong nutty overtones. Good for a glass, maybe. Not for a case.

Leffe Blond- This beer is quite hoppy. Floral hops with a moderately bitter finish and a really strong flavor. Syrupy mouthfeel. A little disappointing overall, don't think I would get it again. 

Blanche des Neiges-A Wit Bier! I love wit biers and this one did not disappoint. Beautiful straw color, nice lacing, floral hints and a nice finish. Reminds me of Hoegaarden or my Coopers wheat beer kit. Excellent stuff.

Caracole- This beer was the highest in alcohol content and really reminded me of a weaker barleywine; which is not so good as I am not a fan of that style. Its named as an amber ale and I'd agree, the color is a lively deep red, like ripe cherries, with a touch of brown. No detectable hoppiness but a hint of malt and a slightly bitter finish I'd attribute to the high ABV (7.5%). Cool label, nice to try once.

All in all it was pretty tasty stuff. I suddenly feel the urge to get back there and try a few more and see what I can find. Once Sue comes back to Taiwan we'll make our way over here and she'll help me give you guys the skinny on few more brews.

So, until then, happy brewing. Or drinking. Or robot building. Or whatever you people do.

Homebrew Wednesday #4 Coopers English Bitter

The Coopers English Bitter I just brewed is the third and final beer that I brought back to Taiwan from my trip to Singapore. I have been steadily working my way through my IPA supply and I'm sad to see that I only have five bottles left. But, I have shared this one a lot more than my other beers in part because I've had more occasions to do so, and also because  I'm proudest of this one; it's the clearest, cleanest beer, tastiest beer I've brewed yet.

Not that I'm bragging. (I am).

Anyway, I was doing some math the other day and it occurred to me that I didn't have to wait until my IPA was entirely gone to brew my next batch of beer. In the past I've had to wait because I only had enough gear to bottle and drink one brew at a time. But over the last few months I've been steadily collecting Grolsch swingtop bottles and I've got about 35 of them now. Score! Cheers to Uzo in downtown Taichung for setting aside a whole bunch and donating them to my brewing adventures.

The recipe:

  • 1.7kg can Coopers English Bitter 
  • 500g Coopers Light Dry Malt
  • 1 tsp Wyeast nutrient blend

For the EB I made a fresh batch of sanitizer because I'm super paranoid about sanitation and  put on some of my favorite tunes and got everything ready to go.

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Homebrew Wednesday #3: Weisswine Batch 2

While enjoying my Coopers IPA I got the itch to brew something, again. I was already stocked up on beer so I thought I'd make some more Weisswine, and experiment a bit more this time.

Sue and I made a trip to Costco and I bought 14 liters of juice to ferment into alcohol-filled-tasty-goodness; 8 liters of Treetop apple juice and about 7 liters of Kirkland apple peach passionfruit. I grabbed the apple because I'd wanted to make something hard-apple since I saw a recipe for Apfelwein floating around on a few forums. Once I saw the APPF juice Sue said that it sounded tasty as well, so I bought both.

The recipe:

Hard Apple

  • 4 liters of Treetop apple juice
  • 2 cups white table sugar
  • 1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
  • 1/2 sachet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

APPF

  • 2.87 liters of apple peach passionfruit juice
  • 700 ml of Treetop apple juice
  • 1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
  • the other 1/2 of a sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

I went with different juices for these because the BIOES juice I used last time was ok, but not that great, and these are sold in bulk. I also wanted to make something that actually tasted good. I added a bunch of sugar to each one to up my ABV, but I varied the amount slightly to see how it affects the taste. More importantly, this time I had proper yeast! Bread yeast did the trick just fine last time but a lot of the off flavors and dryness were probably primarily due to that as well as the high fermentation temperature. Bread yeast is not made for making booze.

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Home Brew Wednesday #1: Coopers IPA

After I brewed my last batch of Coopers Wheat, I ran out of Carb drops. Two beers worth of tasty homebrew fix-ins in the fridge and no way to carbonate them. Sigh. Good thing that in June I took a three week sabbatical back to the states for my pal's wedding. Amidst chugging as much tasty microbrew as I could get my hands on and thickening my waistline on some good ol' American cuisine, I ordered eight bags of the Coopers Carbonation Drops. I figured that was enough for a couple beers and some other adventures as well.

Then, two days after I got back from the states I got all my gear out of the closet and brewed my Coopers IPA. I was feeling much more confident this time around having two other successful batches under my belt and I was excited to make a darker beer after making the Lager and the Wheat.

The recipe: 

  • 1 can Coopers IPA ME
  • 500g light dry malt
  • 300g dextrose
  • 1/2 a tablespoon (or so) of Wyeast nutrient

This time around I changed a few things and even though it was only my third beer I felt the itch to start experimenting.

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Homebrew: Coopers Wheat Beer

 

It didn't take me long to drink up all of the Coopers Lager that I brewed for my first batch and the more empty bottles I had, the more I wanted to brew another beer. Of course, getting my ingredients was an ever present problem and I had no wish to kick out a ton of money and have some goodies shipped from the Coopers office in Adelaide to my house in Taichung. Luckily, Chinese New Year solved my problem.

As a side note, for those of you who aren't so familiar with Chinese culture, when the lunar year ends in January of February there is a big celebration that you can read all about here. Mostly for foreign teachers like me it means that we have a week off of work and it's the perfect time for travel.

I went to Singapore.

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My first batch of brew: Coopers Lager

After I decided that it was time to brew my first beer I felt an immense wave of excitement coupled with a sneaking anxiety. I was thrilled to finally be able to try brewing, something that I'd wanted to do for a long time, but I was also nervous that I'd botch it the first time. This, of course, is a concern that I'm sure every new brewer feels the first time, but mine had more of an edge. If I screwed up this first batch I'd have to wait a few more weeks/months until I could get more supplies for another beer. As I said before, there are no homebrew stores in Taiwan, so I wouldn't be able to run down the street  for another can of malt extract and some brewing sugar.

Nonetheless, I tried my hand at it anyway.

During my research previous to this first batch I found a fantastic youtube channel called Craigtube that had some great videos on how to brew with a Coopers kit for the first time, and other useful stuff. My thanks to Craig and his videos for giving me the step by step know-how I needed. Anyway, I pulled up one of Craig's videos I'd already watched about a dozen times and wrote out instructions for myself, leaving the video open and ready in case I wanted to review something. Which I did. A lot.

So, I sanitized the crap out of all of my equipment using Starsan and set my can of malt extract to warming. What followed was a slightly frenzied mixing of ingredients (which I will post below) and a few minutes of near panic at what I perceived to be mistakes that were going to ruin my beer. But, all in all it was great fun and before I was finished I couldn't wait to make another one.

The recipe:

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