The Bar Towel

of my completed batches my personal fav was my second batch. it was a belgian ale with brett added at bottling. i still have a 6er that’s creepin up on a year old. i have yet to brew a terrible batch and a few have only been "drinkable" but batch 2 is still the best ive done so far.

what about all you other homebrewers what your best batch?

I've been very happy with both of my last 2 all grains: 1 American IPA and 1 Wiezen.

I've found the more I improve my techniques, the better my brews.

As for my worse, it was a Vanilla Stout. It was actually pretty good when I racked to my secondary but I decided to add 250 ml of Pure vanilla extract to carboy. I WAAAY overestimated adding this as I was hoping for just a touch of vanilla flavoring.

I've always loved my IPA's because they are so over the top, like the Stone, Three Floyds and Southern Tier specialties we rarely get in Canada.

But these days, I've been experimenting with yeast strains and chocolates in brewing an imperial stout with Carabean 87% cacao chocolate, and it is simply amazing. If I wasnt this lazy I'd enter this one in brewing contests.

I do need to work on my lighter beer styles though, which I suck at, because its going to be a long summer drinking this heavy stuff.

iguenard wrote: But these days, I've been experimenting with yeast strains and chocolates in brewing an imperial stout with Carabean 87% cacao chocolate.

How and when are you adding the chocolate?

iguenard wrote:I do need to work on my lighter beer styles though, which I suck at, because its going to be a long summer drinking this heavy stuff.

I've decided to start doing more of this too. I make a lot of good beers, but most of them are quite strong, so my friends and family aren't crazy about them. I made a really nice brown ale in Feb, I've got a hefe lined up for later this month, and then a witbier in the summer, and I shoot for 4-4.5% abv on all of them. It is quite a skill to brew a low abv beer with lots of flavour.

I always say my best batch will hopefully be the next one! A few people have asked me this question, and I really don't have an answer. I've been happy with a lot of the beers I make, and I have won lots of medals, but I always see room for improvement too, and I think that is important for any brewer.

As for worst, I've had a few stinkers, but as long as you know where you went wrong, and you get less and less of them, it's no big deal.

The illusive Lager is also a big test. I just don't have the space (ie fridge) for holding at low temperatures for a long period of time.

Gedge wrote:

iguenard wrote: But these days, I've been experimenting with yeast strains and chocolates in brewing an imperial stout with Carabean 87% cacao chocolate.

How and when are you adding the chocolate?

Well depends on the type of chocolate. I stay away from milk chocolate since the fatty content would apparently not agree well with the brewing process. Last batch I used was super high quality chocolate that melts in the hands just as well as in my kettle. (screw that M&M-type chocolate that doesnt melt)

You can add it at varying minutes left in the boil. From experimenting I am not sure whats best. I think it doesnt really matter as ample enough time to melt properly. So adjust based on the solidity of the chocolate. The meltier the merrier.

Adding it cold to fermentors will be a waste of chocolate.

Also, bitterness is much of a factor. It translates VERY well to the beer. At 87% cacao, it produced a beer that is really strong in bitterness. I like dark chocolate, but if you prefer milk chocolate, try to avoid anything at or over 70% cacao.

From a few years ago the best brew my friends and I did was a youngberry ale. We used Ceres juice. It was a little tart and there was a good amount of flavour to it but not over the top. Quite nice. The girlfriend even liked it (she hated all our other beers.) Sadly that was the last one we did.

Two interesting brews were the braggot and the vanilla bean cream ale. They were both made early on with various problems which improved by the time we got to the youngberry. Anyways, for the braggot we used a french honey. It tasted faintly of bubble gum. It was nasty to look at though as there was large floaty bits.

For the vanilla bean cream ale, on our first opening of a bottle we found that there wasn't much vanilla smell or flavour but it was carbonated like pop. We let the bottles sit for a few months and the vanilla finally come through and the carbonation subsided a bit but it was still quite fizzy.

The worst brew, other than a stuck wit, was our first. It was supposed to be a brown ale but man did it look nasty and I thought it tasted like fake bacon bit aftertaste. Ugh.

I made a batch of pruno once..........

SteelbackGuy wrote:I made a batch of pruno once..........

Pruno? Isnt that "jail beer"?

jaymack wrote:

SteelbackGuy wrote:I made a batch of pruno once..........

Pruno? Isnt that "jail beer"?

Yes sir it most certainly is!

Yeah, pale ales & IPA's are so easy and tasty.

When I had a cold basement (as low as 48F), I tested myself with a vienna lager that was just under 4.5%. There was a slight graininess (with hints of astringency). I figured I was over-sparging and that my hard water wasn't helping. I started using distilled water for the sparge & watching the gravity of my runoff. My brews improved... but that could have been a combination of things.

My best brew was the doppelbock I threw on that cake.

My House specialty, Irish Red Ale

Brian