Native Black Bitter Ale Review - Drink Local!

With all of the local Minnesota Hop talk going around lately I thought I'd step back to my first experience and experiment with locally grown hops from 2009.   I got a bunch of Cascade and Goldings hops from a guy in New Hope.  I used all 4 ounces of Cascade hops in my Bitter Black/ Cascadian Dark / IBA.  I used the Goldings in small additions to many of my beers with great, yet subtle results.  

Last Fall I brewed a nice hoppy Brown Ale using 4 oz. of locally grown cascade hops.  I guess it would be considerd a Cascadian Dark, or a Black Bitter, or a MN Black Bitter.    I figured that the hops were probably on the low end of the Alpha spectrum compared to most cascade hops grown in the US which are grown primarily in the great northwest. Is my assumption wrong...who knows...without a scientific test.  I also figured into my recipe that over hopping would be better then under hopping because we might as well see what these local hops can do right? It ended up turning into an India Brown ale, or possibly an American Brown Ale, or Black Bitter...that's another debate all together and one that I've concluded to call  Black Bitter.  Not sure how it should be classified but it was damn good.  I couldn't have been happier with the result of this bad boy! My friends were freakin over this shit!

This was my 2009 harvest ale, and here is a little review from back then....

Native Cascade Black Bitter Ale- Harvest Ale
Pours a nice dark brown to black, almost like a light stout in appearance. Initially you are hit by the aroma of roasted malts, a little bit of coffee, some caramel but not too much, and some nice fresh hops! Mainly just roastiness in the nose. You can slightly pick up the hop aroma, almost sweet in the smell. When you take a sip you get a beautiful mix of malt and hops. For the yeast, I think it is a bit subdued and it's hard to tell how that is effecting the beer, especially since I went all weird and used two different strains (American ale, and English ale yeast). Mainly when you take a sip at first you get the nice roasted barley and then on the back end you get slammed,not with bitterness, but with the taste of sweet Cascade hop nectar, fruity and sweet with citrus and grapefruit. I say slammed, but it's more like a controlled fall from malt to hops. I'll surely be seeking out some more MN Grown Cascade hops this season from Hippityhops Farms outside of Forest Lake, MN.  Long live the harvest. This year we will have a REAPING party with Native Black Bitter Ale for sure! 

Let me know if you'd like the recipe and I'll dig it up for you.

Brewing/Tasting notes from 1.17.10

Updates....Dry Hop, and more Kegs!

I've got the IPA Dry Hopping right now in Secondary fermentation. Also, I now have not only my GimmeThatNut Brown flowin, but I'll also soon have my Native Brown Ale carbed and flowin as well! F-N-A, right?

GimmeThatNut Brown on TAP in Northeast!

So... Dan-o (handyman extraordinaire) ended up stopping by tonight as planned. He just so happened to walk in the door as soon as dinner was coming out of the oven! Pork tenderloin, Mash potatoes, peas, and a nice cool glass of Ale Asylum - Madtown Nutbrown! I ended up putting him to work and in the pictures below you can see the finished result of his fine work! GimmeThatNut Brown ale, my first All-grain batch of beer is on tap in Northeast! I ended up bottling a 6 pack of bombers in order to enter them into upcoming homebrew contests. Holy funking snit, I can't believe it. Do you think I should expand to three taps? Yes, is the answer!!! EXTREMELY!

Kegged Beer, Keggerator, New Brew...

I've got a few things going on in my brew house this week.

First things first, kegging my first beer! I'll be kegging most of my GimmeThatNut Brown ale, probably 4 gallons of it, and bottling the last gallon. This is a huge step because I've had a little bit of trouble dealing with bottle carbonation, and bottling is time consuming. It'll be nice to get a perfect pour out of the tap!

Second, Dan-o (handyman extraordinaire) is gonna help me convert my bar refrigerator into a homebrew kegerator. Drill a couple of holes, pop in a couple pieces of hardware and I should be set! It's always good to have handy friends, especially one's that like to get paid in beer instead of money! I've got everything I need to get it done, 5 lb. CO2 tank full, CO2 gauge, lines for gas and liquid, conversion kit for the fridge, a 5 gallon cornelius keg. All I need is a few more kegs, and a couple more taps and I'll be stylin!

Thirdly, I'm about to brew up a clone of Bell's Two Hearted Ale. I'm going to alter it a little bit to my tastes. I’ll be adding a couple extra pounds in the grain bill, and also not as much hops for bittering. I’m also using a different strain of yeast then what Bells uses. I need to figure out how to propagate yeast from the bottle. I’m sure my wife won’t mind having a yeast propagating factory in our basement.

Big Water Ale - IPA – All Grain (5.5 Gallons)

12 lbs Rahr 2-row Malt

2 lbs Vienna Malt

0.5 lb Cara-pils/Dextrin

0.5 lb Crystal/Caramel 20L

5 ounces Centennial hops (60, 30, 15, 5, 1)

Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast

Irish Moss

I’ll mash at 152 degrees for 60 minutes, and sparge at 169 degrees for 20. My last beer I had 70% extraction efficiency of sugars from the grains. I’m hoping to do a little better this time with a higher sparge temperature to hopefully get closer to 80%. I did add a little extra 2-row to combat my pour efficiency.

Big week! I'll make sure to upload photo's of my first pour(in a couple weeks), as well as some construction photo's of Dan-o and I working on the kegerator set up. I'll also upload a video of my dog chugging a beer in under 10 seconds. YEAH!

Eazier said then done...