Indulging in Chocolate Indulgence

Brewery Ommegang, Reviews, Stout 2 Responses »
Feb 022010

I like stouts. I like chocolate. I love chocolate stouts. Brewery Ommegang is one of my favorite breweries out there. They make readily available and fairly inexpensive beers that are damn good. I’ve been wanting to try Chocolate Indulgence for a while, and during a trip to the brewery this past October, I picked a bottle up. It’s been sitting in the cellar since, and I’m ready to drink it now. What am I expecting? With a name like Chocolate Indulgence, I want it to be like eating a chocolate bar while drinking a very good stout. I am ready to begin.

Into my pint glass (I have a Chocolate Indulgence chalice, not sure why I didn’t pour it into that) the beer pours a pitch black, with a really nice cascading two finger tan head. Aroma is not really strong, some roasted malts are present. No chocolate. Uh-oh. Unfortunately, chocolate seems to be lacking in the flavor department. Flavor is sweet, with a slight roasted taste.  Other than that, there isn’t much else. Body is medium to full. Carbonation is low.

Overall, the beer itself isn’t bad. I think where Ommegang went wrong is the name and the style. First off, Chocolate Indulgence invokes visions and dreams of delicious chocolate syrup pouring from a bottle. I can’t detect a hint of chocolate. Secondly, I don’t consider this to be a stout. To me, it is more like a porter. It’s not that heavy, it doesn’t have that roasted, burnt flavor often found in stouts. Even on BeerAdvocate it’s listed as a Belgian Strong Dark. It’s a good beer, just change the name. C’mon Ommegang! You guys make great beers, tweak this recipe, give everyone the Chocolate Indulgence they crave and deserve!

Posted by Greg at 8:50 pm

No Longer Shall We Be Lazy…Here’s Another Write Up On Our Various Doings Part 2

American IPA, Beer Doings, Dunkel, Equipment, Homebrews, Kolsch, Recipes, Stout 1 Response »
Feb 082008

Ok, part 2 is here. Hey Clubby, up your nose with a siphon hose buddy. It’s not easy being the marketing guy, label maker guy, and what not for this brewery. If you can’t take my criticism, well, then, I don’t know. Stop putting honey in all of your recipes!! I hate you!

Now that that’s over, our ChocoRasStout has steadily been improving. A couple weeks in the cellar conditioning have helped it. This beer is best served around 50 degrees. When it’s too cold, a lot of the flavors are masked. Drinking it straight from the cellar, it had a really nice chocolate flavor that mixed well with the raspberries. After a few sips the raspberries took over as the predominant flavor, which there’s nothing to complain about. Towards the end you get the bitterness and dryness from the chocolate. It’s a great dessert beer, not a session beer.

Lastly, we brewed an American IPA. Crappy time of the year to do it since the hop shortage is really getting worse, but we did it anyways. The original recipe called for just Simcoe hops and Cascade hops. Unfortunately, Beer & Wine Hobby decided to change their ordering of hops right as the order was placed. Instead of getting the 2 or 3 ounces we ordered, we only got 1, since we only got 5 lbs of grain through them, and they allow 1 ounce of hops per 7 lbs of grain. It’s understandable why the stores are doing it, we have nothing against it, but it just sucks when you make a beer that relies on hops. The rest of the order was placed through Austin Homebrew Supply. It was our first time ordering through them, and service was great. Since we didn’t have enough hops we had to improvise. We opened up the freezer, and took a mish mash of hops that we had left over. How this will taste, we do not know, but it is definitely interesting. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:
5.0 lbs American 2-row
2.0 lbs Crystal Malt 10°L
1.0 lbs Crystal Malt 40°L
3.0 lbs Dry Light
1.0 lbs Honey
1.0 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale
0.5 oz Challenger (7.5%) – added during boil, boiled 60 min
0.5 oz Goldings (6%) – added during boil, boiled 60 min
.5 oz Simcoe (12%) – added during boil, boiled 30 min
.5 oz Simcoe (12%) – added during boil, boiled 10 min
.5 oz Cascade (4.6%) – added during boil, boiled 10 min
1.0 oz Cascade (4.6%) – added dry to secondary fermenter
.5 oz Cascade (4.6%) – added during boil, boiled 5 min

See, again with the honey. As you can see, we will be dry hopping with 1 oz of Cascade. It will be our first time dry hopping, and it should be exciting. We got an OG of 1.068, instead of 1.073, which gave us 68% mashing efficiency. Not great, but decent for only our third time partial mashing, and we used a lot more grain this time. It’s been almost a week, and within the first day the airlock was bubbling like crazy, maybe 1 bubble per second. The hop aroma coming from it is pretty awesome too. Should be tasty.

It’s bed time now, so maybe tomorrow with my review I will also go over our mashing techniques, and maybe you can tell us how to improve. Adios.

Posted by Greg at 12:51 am

No Longer Shall We Be Lazy...Here's Another Write Up On Our Various Doings

American IPA, Beer Doings, Dunkel, Equipment, Homebrews, Kolsch, Lager, Recipes, Stout No Responses »
Feb 072008

While we may not have been updating as much lately, whether it is our reviews or regular write ups, we have still been brewing beer and doing lots of beer related things. So here’s a little catch up from the last post which was the day we brewed our Kolsch.

The Kolsch had been fermenting for a week, so we decided to rack to secondary on Saturday the 2nd day of February. The gravity was at 1.014. Slightly higher than our target of 1.013, and a little high for a Kolsch, we felt comfortable moving it. For the next month it will be lagering in the basement between 45 and 50 degrees. We of course tasted it, and as always, it tasted wonderful. Definitely looking forward to this one finishing.

Clubby’s Dunkel which has been named temporarily as the Campfire Logger has been in the bottles for 2 weeks, at around 65-68 degrees, and wasn’t fully carbonated yet. We will be leaving it in the warmer air for another week, then transfer to the cellar to condition some more. The taste was pretty light and watery, with a little bitterness. It is obviously drinkable, and by drinkable I mean that you can down probably 10 of them and not notice. Next time it should be much better.

That’s it for now, Part 2 will include updates on our ChocoRasStout, and also our newest creation, Hop Shortage IPA.

Posted by Greg at 7:01 pm

Bottling and Secondary Fermentation, Oh My.....

Beer Doings, Dunkel, Lager, Stout No Responses »
Jan 022008

OK, so on Sunday 12/30.07, we bottled our ChocoRasStout. The process involved us sanitizing bottles, 37 to be exact, since we did only 4 gallons, not the usual 5. We then sanitized the siphons and hoses and what have yous involved with bottling. We boiled 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar in 2 cups of water for our priming sugar. We mixed it all in with our beer in the bottling bucket with the beer, and filled the bottles. I did the filling, Clubby did the capping. A tip for all homebrewers: If you are using bottles from beers you drink, do not use Birra Moretti bottles. They make a horrible sound when you cap, and do not properly crimp. One we did crimp, but we are very suspicious of it, so it is now marked with an X.

Once that was done, we cleaned everything again to rack our “dunkel” (in quotation marks because it’s not a real one) into Secondary fermentation for the lagering process. We took a gravity reading and it was 1.011-1.012 (Not quite sure which one, too damn close to tell) which was right on the money. While we were transferring we snuck a sample. Lemme tell you, it is very interesting. Had a decent beer flavor at first, then all of a sudden you get hit with what to me was a peanut butter cookie flavor. Not that I didn’t like it, but I don’t think it belongs there. I think we fudged up the diacetyl rest. Oh well, we’ll see how it turns out, if the taste disappears or not. I don’t think we should call this a dunkel, maybe just call it Campfire Lager. Our plan is to let it lager for 3 weeks, then bottle.

Some other exciting news: 2 new members to the Campfire Brewery! That’s right, we now have another plastic fermentation bucket and glass carboy! So that means we can do 2 brews at once! We’re looking forward to making as much beer as possible.

PS Note taking is very important to brewing. One of the reasons we did this blog is to have have another place to keep track of what we are doing and keep notes, since we aren’t great note takers as it is. We figured we would keep the blog as up to date as possible. As you can see, it is Wednesday, and we bottled Sunday. I actually had to ask other people when we bottled when I started writing this cuz I couldn’t remember. So a note to self: TAKE BETTER NOTES!

Posted by Greg at 10:33 pm

ChocoRasStout Moves to Tertiary

Stout, Uncategorized No Responses »
Dec 282007

Today the Chocolate Raspberry Stout has moved into it’s new home, into a third carboy for tertiary. The primary purpose of this was to remove the beer from the raspberries and get it off whatever trub was in there. I took a hydrometer reading and also had a tasting. The beer was much better than when we moved it into secondary, the bitterness was way down. Also, the raspberries added a great sweetness, while also adding wonderfully mild yet noticeable raspberry flavor. The gravity reading wasn’t what we were hoping for, it only dropped to 1.020 from 1.021, but that’s OK, It should still be great.

Posted by admin at 9:34 pm Tagged with: , ,

Chocolate Raspberry Stout Has a New Home

Stout No Responses »
Dec 282007

Well, today we moved our stout from primary to secondary. We racked on top of 12 oz of raspberries. The gravity reading before the move was 1.021. Our target gravity is 1.014. We used Dole frozen raspberries. They were nuked in the microwave for 3 minutes to thaw and sanitize, then crushed quickly with a fork, then plopped into the carboy. There was about 1 inch of trub at the bottom of the bucket. Pretty funky looking, mixture of hops, yeast, and chocolate. Kinda looked like….Well, you get the picture. Dammit, we should have taken a picture. So the Stout is now currently wrapped in a blanket in the bedroom, where it will remain cozy for the next 2 weeks, until tertiary time.

Posted by admin at 9:25 pm Tagged with: , ,

Chocolate Raspberry Stout

Recipes, Stout 2 Responses »
Dec 282007

Our latest batch which is still fermenting is a chocolate raspberry stout. While Clubby isn’t really a fan of heavy beers, we decided to make this beer to try something new and “daring”. We have absolutely no idea how this will come out, it’s more of an experiment to see if we can come up with some “extreme” beers that taste good. Here’s the recipe:
Brewed 12/1/07
6.6 lbs Munton’s Liquid Light Extract
1 lbs 2-Row Black Malt
1 lbs 2-Row Chocolate Malt
.5 lbs Roasted Barley
3 oz Mt. Hood (4.2%) – added during boil, boiled 60 min
10 oz Chocolate (unsweetened) – added during boil, boiled 15 min
1 oz Fuggle (3.8%) – added during boil, boiled 5 min
12 oz Raspberries (fresh) – added dry to secondary fermenter
1 ea White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout

The grains were steeped in 1.5 gallons of water at 150-160 degrees for 30 minutes. We then sparged them with approximately 1 gallon of hot water. We then added the extract and brought the wort to a boil. The Mt. Hood hops were added for the rest of the 60 minute boil. We used Hershey’s Unsweetened Cocoa Powder with 15 minutes left in the boil. We dumped the whole thing in. Was that too much? We’ll find out. Everyone loves chocolate anyways, right? The Fuggles were added in the last 5 minutes. We moved the wort to the tub so it could cool down. The tub works great if you have less then 3 gallons of wort. When the wort cooled we strained into the plastic 6.5 gallon bucket. 4 oz of hops is a lot. Took forever to pour, the strainer kept clogging with hops and chocolate. We took a gravity reading, and got a SG of 1.057, we were aiming for 1.059. Pretty damn close. We pitched the yeast, and moved the fermenter to the bedroom where it is warmer than the basement. the next day some vigorous fermentation was going on, with the airlock bubbling 26-30 times per minute. It has since subsided, but the temperature has also dropped. The bucket is now wrapped with a blanket to keep it warm. On 12/9/07 we will take a gravity reading, if it is 5-8 points from our FG, we will rack to secondary on top of the raspberries.

Posted by admin at 9:23 pm Tagged with: , ,
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