Begin Brewing!

The actual beer described in this post I'm a big fan of Belgian Trappist beers, and Trappistes Rochefort 10 is one of my favorites. Some time ago I came across a recipe that claimed to be "very much a Trappistes Rochefort 10 clone" and brewed it.  The creator of the recipe was correct, it was quite close to the original. The clone seemed to be missing the head and a caramel note in the original beer, so I tweaked the recipe to include Melanoidin malt and Carapils malt, which in combination seem to me to produce a very creamy, long-lasting Belgian-like head.  Unfortunately in the second version I also added a high-alpha hop to help with head generation and that ruined the beer for me. In this version, I'm going back to the original roots. I'm using just Styrian Goldings to bitter it and Hallertau Mittelfrueh for flavor and aroma.  I'm adding Belgian Cara 45 malt to try to capture the caramel note that was missing from the first version.  I'm also us

Some time ago, perhaps more than a year back, I purchased a Great Pumpkin Ale kit from Adventures in Homebrewing.  The kit's been sitting in my basement in the original double-bagged container ever since.  This weekend, I decided to brew it, though I held out little hope that it will taste very good - not because I think Adventures in Homebrew didn't make a good recipe, but because it has to be at least a year old. There's a good chance the grain has oxidized and gone bad. But rather than throw it out, I decided to brew it anyway. The worst case scenario is that I'll have to dump it later. The original recipe made for a very weak beer compared to most pumpkin ales I've had. It was estimated to have an ABV of 4.3%.  I'm not sure I've ever seen a pumpkin beer that low. I was also concerned that given the age of the grain it might not yield much sugar. I decided to put my own spin on the recipe. If it turns out to be terrible, it won't be Adventures in Ho