Apologies, and Beer Babbling

I must admit that I lied a little bit on my first post. I claimed that it was an Okacim clone that we brewed upon that fateful evening. But fear not gentle reader, I will tell you the real story. Tonight culminated the first part of our latest brewing adventure. I am going to take a bit of time to babble about our beer before bed. We racked the baltic porter over into a secondary fermenter, cleaned out the dead yeast from the bottom of the pail, and sent them to live in compost city! Now we wait a while longer for it to chill out, two weeks-ish, and then we'll be kegging this batch too!

The "almost Okacim" clone, dubbed as such because we've altered the brew to be our own by using a trappist ale yeast instead of the lager yeast traditionally used in baltic porters. The Baltic Porter style is characterized by a dark, complex flavor full of nut, malt, chocolate, licorice, etc. They usually run a pretty high gravity and often end up being in the 8-10%ABV range. These are some kickin' beers. Not for the faint of spirit. This is my favorite kind of beer that we've made so far. It's kinda becoming our club's signature beer.

This is our third time making a baltic porter. Previously to this we made an "almost Baltica" clone with ale yeast and another "almost Baltica" clone with trappist yeast. Taking the recommendation of the man down at the brew store, we ran slightly different direction with this brew by trying a different cloned recipe.

I really love brewing as a process from the beginning to the end. I love smelling the malted grains as we weigh them out at the shop and grind them. We taste the batch at every point in the process. From unfermented wort, sweet and thick, to skunked beer left out overnight. It's easy to snag a sip and really connects you to every phase of that beer's life. Our beer tastes amazing when it's warm and flat... and even better chilled and carbonated. It didn't even last long enough for me to take a good picture.

Not even bubbly yet

Next time at the GBC: This weekend, we're going to make ourselves some jihad wine to serve up some terr'st style lovin'