Minutes from Aug. 14, 2024

Saturday, August 17, 2024

Late start, moved location to Dancing Bee shop
Might impact temperatures, though some people put bottles/cans in freezer to get some better temperatures.
We'll see how that affects things...
AW's "Stargaze" Berlinerweisse with raspberry and lime
- Very lots of head, lots of foam while pouring
- Not much protein, so head is not retained very well
- Maybe has a phenolic note at the end, maybe attributed to the lime
- "Amsterdam Beer"
- Wouldn't get a second one at a bar, but would appreciate the first one
Pretentious Barrel House (Columbus, OH) is going out of business
- General disappointment
- Understandable, though; sour beers only, and very expensive
- Aging time (multiple months) doesn't help, either
TG's commercial Summer Shandy
- Some wheat, the plan is to use light pilsen and some wheat when recreating
- Maybe add some lemon, especially for the sweetness
- Traditional summer shandy is half beer, half lemonade
- Kind of dry...
- Not real sugar, maybe sucralose?
- Suggestion of sweetness
CB's lemon with mead discussion
- Pre-fermentation
- Suggestion of lemon
- Maybe do very late additions or in the secondary
- Maybe use an infusion
TG's commercial Blue Moon
- Need the orange!
- Good beer
- More bitter than remembered, but it could be because it came out of the can (instead of served on draft)
CB's Rhinegeist Mango Bubbles (Cincinnati)
- Tropical blend
- Supposed to be an IPA? No!
- "Ale with natural flavors" on the can
- VERY fruity
- Kind of in the alco-pop universe
- "Bubble gum juice"
- Not very "beer"-y
- "Technically" an ale; better described as a malt liquor with flavor
- Seems like something you should have out of a fancy glass on the beach with an umbrella (JB)
CB's Wooly Pig Schwarzbier (Fresno)
- Smell the roast!
- Love the aromas!
- Very nice
- Very user-friendly, easily approachable
- From the color, you might thing it's syrupy, but it actually has a quite light consistency
- Dark lagers seem very rare, especially compared to other styles
JB's Bickerdyke Cream Ale (Mount Vernon)
- A little dark, maybe a cara thing
- Still not much head - foam quickly subsides
- Itty little bit skunky?
- Maybe comes from using sketchy left-over old yeast from SBC (a strain of some Cali-Ale yeast)
SK's English IPA homebrew
- "Good"
- IPA by default (it doesn't fit into any other categories)
- Maybe some more bitterness than remembered
CP's Pretentious Anthocyanin (Columbus)
- Leathery phenolics
- Smoky, like cigar smoke
- Maybe coming from the barrels it was aged in
- Beef jerky?
- Unsure how barrels were chosen (out of the different things that could've been aged in them before the beer was)
- Unsure how recipes might be derived
CB's elderberry mead homebrew
- Normally, elderberries have a somewhat medicinal quality
- This one is very mild
- If we didn't know it was elderberry, we would guess blueberry, raspberry
- ABV is 6.5%, which it doesn't really taste like
- This was made using 7 pounds of elderberries for a five gallon batch
- White wine yeast
- Added acid blend - 55g - which was designed for ciders, probably includes malic, tartaric, and citric acid
CB's experimental mead
- 2 batches, each had same quantity of honey
- One mead used natural ingredients only
- The other mead used an acid blend
- Acid blend mead seemed to turn out better
- ABV is 7%, which is low compared to most other meads - this was on purpose
- Backsweetened with cane sugar (after k-meta and k-sorbate to kill the yeast)
- Would like it to be drier, but sugar seems to offset this
- Letting it age obviously lets a lot of the off-flavors dissipate
- Used a liquid mead yeast, helps make it smooth
- Very smooth
CB's cider
- Drier
- Tarter
- "Bulk" cider experiment
- Early-season dessert varietals of apples used, not cider varietals
- Maybe try blending with meads? Cuts the tartness and gets some extra sweetness
CP's Pretentious smoked watermelon sour
- "Oh, that's violent"
- Watermelon and phenols
- Pucker! Very sour...
- Taste is okay, smell is pretty much a no-go
- Definitely can smell the smoked watermelon that was used
- Could approximate this using summer shandy + apple cider vinegar + liquid smoke? Anyone want to try?
CP's weird one: Daytona 1991 Harley Davidson commemorative American lager
- Sweet malty flavors
- "Genuine Beer" on the can
- Originally made by Evansville Brewing Co.
- Hazy - plenty of particles
- Hops are just...gone
- Sanitation was solid, no off-flavors, even after over three decades of sitting on a shelf
Dry-hopping discussion
- Experiments have shown that after 24 hours, not much more hop character is imparted when dry hopping
- Concern with leaving it in longer (on the scale of weeks) is that the vegetal matter starts to come out
- Under a week should be fine
- You can also use T90 or "cryo" hops to limit the amount of vegetal matter - general rule of thumb is to cut the dosage of hops in half if using pellets with higher hop oil content, since T90, by definition, have twice as much hop oil as T45 hops
Next month's plan
- Consider bringing your clone of your commercial beer
- Also bring your original commercial beer for comparison

Can of beer that reads "50th Anniversary Daytona 1991 Harley Davidson Genuine Beer"