I brew your recipe competition!

Williams 728
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Bottled yesterday after dry-hopping for too long... oh well, it still had the potency to muster about some wonderful aromas during the transfer.
 
It's got bubbles on the top so that's a positive. Obviously it will improve with another week or two in the bottle, but how is it now?
 
The aroma is fruity-winey, yeast-bready, alcoholic, slightly musty-but in a nice way. Aroma is not as hoppy as anticipated. Flavor is intensely spicy-bitter, herbal/earthy, malty/sweet. It is a full bodied beer. The hop character is not at all like, say an american ipa --> fresh tropical / citrus fruity, and is not near that intense. This beer is rather in the biere-de-garde universe, but on steroids. Herbal/earthy/musty/winey. It will improve with further lagering, no doubt, and luckily I have a genuine old wine cellar 10 feet below my house for that purpose 😀. It is an interesting beer and I'm happy to have brewed it!
 
yeastforbrains said:
The aroma is fruity-winey, yeast-bready, alcoholic, slightly musty-but in a nice way. Aroma is not as hoppy as anticipated. Flavor is intensely spicy-bitter, herbal/earthy, malty/sweet. It is a full bodied beer. The hop character is not at all like, say an american ipa --> fresh tropical / citrus fruity, and is not near that intense. This beer is rather in the biere-de-garde universe, but on steroids. Herbal/earthy/musty/winey. It will improve with further lagering, no doubt, and luckily I have a genuine old wine cellar 10 feet below my house for that purpose 😀. It is an interesting beer and I'm happy to have brewed it!
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I'm glad that recipe turned out so well for you. Maybe I'll try it myself.
 
Yooper said:
...shipping beer internationally is major illegal activity...
Click to expand...

So here's what I did.
I sent a "test parcel".
When shipping from france to the states, there's a customs declaration form to complete, and where I clearly put the content description "2 bottles homebrewed beer". What I'm doing here is not illegal, but analogous to passing customs physically through the "something to declare" gate, showing them the beers and letting them judge if it's OK to bring it through or not. I suppose the 2 bottles might get tossed and I will have paid shipping for nothing, but at least within a few weeks from now we will have learned how the law on shipping such small amounts of beer is enforced in real life.

Cheers
Yfb

View attachment 1424365931174.jpg
 
yeastforbrains said:
So here's what I did.
I sent a "test parcel".
When shipping from france to the states, there's a customs declaration form to complete, and where I clearly put the content description "2 bottles homebrewed beer". What I'm doing here is not illegal, but analogous to passing customs physically through the "something to declare" gate, showing them the beers and letting them judge if it's OK to bring it through or not. I suppose the 2 bottles might get tossed and I will have paid shipping for nothing, but at least within a few weeks from now we will have learned how the law on shipping such small amounts of beer is enforced in real life.

Cheers
Yfb
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For anybody following this thread, or who stumbled across it, the beer passed US Customs without any problems. I received two bottles of beer from the gracious Yeast For Brains. Looking forward to sampling one tonight.
 
sablesurfer said:
Favors get better/more blended by now?
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Apologies for late reply, sablesurfer. I find it quite hard to taste-judge own brews, perhaps aryoung might care to leave a comment, as he's probably tasted it by now? In my opinion, it's rich with floral and sweet aromas, primarily I detect the styrian goldings. I find the aroma somewhat similar to Orval, but more intense, sweet and roasty-malty. It has some aspect of barley-wine to it. It's a yummy beer that I definitely wouldn't be disappointed with bringing home as a blind catch from the liquor store. Bottom line, it is one of the most memorable brews I ever made, if not purely for its quality as a beer, then because of the interactive and international collaboration factors that made it so much more fun.
Cheers!
 
I'm not the best person to give a description but I will try. I will agree for the most part with yeastforbrains. It was definitely malty and had some yeast phenolics that lent a spicy quality. I drank that beer a day after I received it so I'm going by my faded memory.

I did drink the dunkel recently after letting it cold condition some more. That was a good, crisp, malty lager. My wife enjoyed it, which is a testament to the quality if you knew her. She's not a fan of "homebrew". No matter the awards I bring home, she is rarely impressed.

I want to say thanks again for shipping the beer over. Sorry it took so long to give you any feedback.
 
yeastforbrains said:
In my opinion, it's rich with floral and sweet aromas, primarily I detect the styrian goldings. I find the aroma somewhat similar to Orval, but more intense, sweet and roasty-malty. It has some aspect of barley-wine to it. It's a yummy beer that I definitely wouldn't be disappointed with bringing home as a blind catch from the liquor store. Bottom line, it is one of the most memorable brews I ever made, if not purely for its quality as a beer, then because of the interactive and international collaboration factors that made it so much more fun.
Cheers!
Click to expand...

I guess since I wrote the recipe I should brew it at some point. Your description is pretty enticing. If the beer is still tasty 6 months out from brew day, that's a good sign. In the spirit of the original recipe, I'll brew with whatever hops and yeast I happen to have on hand. I might need a copy of the label.
 
Adding this to the brew queue. How much roasted barley did you add? The color in the pic a few posts above is pretty.
 
Here's the recipe with notes as exported from brewR

Doppel Sticke/Indian Alt/Kitchen Sink/Old Imposter



Recipe specifics:



Style: Generic Ale

Batch size: 5.5 gal

Boil volume: 7.7 gal

OG: 1.080

FG: 1.016
Bitterness (IBU): 51.3

Color (SRM): 14.9

ABV: 8.5%



Grain/Sugars:



12.15 lb Munich Light (Castle Malting), 66.3%

5.00 lb Pale Ale (Castle Malting), 27.3%

1.08 lb Pilsener (Belgian), 5.9%

0.11 lb Chocolat (Castle Malting), 0.6%



Hops:



2.68 oz Cascade (AA 6.6%, Pellet) 60 min, 51.3 IBU

9.74 oz HopMixture * (AA 4.5%, Pellet) 0 min, 0.0 IBU

2.68 oz HopMixture * (AA 4.5%, Pellet) dry hop



Yeast/Misc:



Chiller & Irish Moss, boil 15 min

Safale US05, 1.0 unit(s), Yeast Rehydrated, 1 pack = 11.5 g.

Saflager S23, 2.0 unit(s), Yeast Rehydrated, 2 packs = 23 g.



Recipe Notes:



* HopMixture is a blend of equal amounts of styrian, ekg, tradition and hersbrucker pellets, with a handful of northern brewer pellets.



Batch Notes:



22 November 2014, mash dayMashing at 67°C in 22 liters.Vorlauf 2 liters, then collecting first runnings23 November, boil dayMash had cooled to about 30°CAdding 15 liters @ 95°C, stirred it up, increased mash to 68°C, 2nd vorlauf 2 liters2nd Runoff to boil kettleCollected ca. 29 liters totalAdded bitter and flame-out hops in hop bags. Sterilized flame-out bag in a baby bottle sterilizer.After boil, chilled to 17°CCollected 21 liters @ 1.080Rehydrated 3 packs of yeast (34.5 g.) in 3 dl. @ 35°C, stirred up on stir plate, cooled down to 23°C and pitched into 17°C wort, at around 9PMLeft to ferment in ambient 16°C24 November, morningIn spite the relatively short time since pitching, in spite the cool wort and the ambient temps, the air lock is chugging away in a controlled, steady fashion, a couple burps per second.December 3, SG=1.016, still some gentle al activityJan 2/3 2015 - bottleday19 liters packed in duvel/chimay/and generic 75 cl bottles, used125 g priming sugar, should give around 2.6 volumes co2.



-----
 
kingwood-kid said:
I guess since I wrote the recipe I should brew it at some point. Your description is pretty enticing. If the beer is still tasty 6 months out from brew day, that's a good sign. In the spirit of the original recipe, I'll brew with whatever hops and yeast I happen to have on hand. I might need a copy of the label.
Click to expand...

I attached a copy of the label

10_mod_ddd0.5_1420589930_3.5X3.0.png
 
I brewed mine exactly a month ago and tried the first bottle today. Rich and thick, almost-but-not-quite-cloying, although that's partly due to it's still being pretty undercarbed. Spicy-earthy, complex and difficult to describe accurately, as it's so different from anything else I've brewed in recent memory. I'm looking forward to drinking the rest of the batch.

IMG_0078[1].jpg
 
Awesome! From your photo, the color looks pretty much like mine. Did you use a mix of lager and ale yeast? Also, I have a box of both beers waiting to ship your way since a few months, but for some reason I always forget to pick up packaging tape at the grocery store. One of these days...
 
I used just Nottingham at high-50s, then ramping up. Not a mix, but notty is a pretty good faux-lager yeast.
 
A little update at my end. The label doesn't look so great after several months storage in my cellar, but the beer is still good. Flavors have mellowed and changed quite a bit, I now pick up a licorice or phenolic quality I don't remember from previous bottles.

View attachment 1437589458800.jpg
 
Cheers! Second last bottle on top of the box, very last bottle inside. (Latter also goes for the Aryoung's dunkel). The Old Imposter has aged exceptionally well, and tackled oxidation like a nice port wine. Rich aroma of malt, prunes and figs. Intense flavours of malt and dried fruit, rounded by oxidation and balanced by hop bitterness. All the earlier flairs of sharpness have been polished and ground down to a smooth, but still intense and lovely result. Commercial beer seldom reaches this level. Sending the box tomorrow, hope it gets to USA by Christmas, and that the recent attacks in Paris have not changed US custom practice with heightened suspicion to French parsels. Happy Xmas everyone! YFB

View attachment 1449535061827.jpg
 
Drinking it tonight. It's warmly malty, although not sweet. It has a wonderful dessert spice flavor that I'm assuming comes from the hops. Licorice is probably a good description, or a savory, undersweetened Christmas pastry. It's wonderful in a lot of subtle ways, and better than my version. Thank you for sending it.
 
kingwood-kid said:
Drinking it tonight. It's warmly malty, although not sweet. It has a wonderful dessert spice flavor that I'm assuming comes from the hops. Licorice is probably a good description, or a savory, undersweetened Christmas pastry. It's wonderful in a lot of subtle ways, and better than my version. Thank you for sending it.
Click to expand...

Cool thread and great idea. Do you still have any of your batch left? Hope you bring some to this months meeting. It will be interesting to taste now that I have read this thread.
 
It's all gone, alas. Yeastforbrains' batch was much better than mine anyway, since mine had terrible efficiency and attenuation. But having made a similar beer successfully before, I can tell you that Munich malt and German hops in IPA quantities is an excellent combo.
 

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