Beer Review: What I've Been Randomly Drinking These Past Months

And now another beer review.  I tend to buy 12-pack samplers or individual bottles because I want to try as many different beers as possible, so in the past 7 months I've had a number of different beers and here I give you my impressions of them.  These cover late fall through spring, and I really got back into porters and stouts this past year, so a majority of these are of those varieties.  I also wanted to brew a Black IPA this summer, which I have, so I tried a few bottles of that variety.  Here's a run down of beer I've been drinking just to share my thoughts on good beer.

I Like My IPA Black as Night

Malt, yeast, hops, hops, hops!  This is an IPA, after all.

It's been two months since I brewed this batch, another five weeks since I've bottled it, and have already tasted two bottles.  Why the wait for this post?  Well, as regular readers know, I am unable to spend a lot of time on this blog, and I recently finished the long-in-waiting post on Christmas/Winter themed beers, and since that's been waiting for months I wanted to get that out before this one.  But I've just brewed another batch, whose brewing post probably won't be written until after I bottle it in two weeks, so it's time I get this one out.  

This is my first Black IPA, or IBA (Indian black ale).  It's a recipe from my friend and college roommate Sean Lewis that is reminiscent of Stone's Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale.  It's also the first time I've dry hopped and the first time I ever heard of first wort hopping, and had to do some research to figure out what that is and how to carry it out; this will be covered later.  The recipe Sean gave me was for 5-gallon brewing, as that's his wont, but I'm a 1-gallon brewer, so I took out my trusty slide rule, filled notebooks with advanced calculations, and got a smaller-yeild recipe for my 1-gallon brewing.  I also use dry yeast so what I used is different from his recipe, and made hops substitutions to use what I already had in my freezer.  But that's the glory of homebrewing! You don't have to follow a recipe to the letter and you'll still get beer.  Relax, have a homebrew.

The Beers of Christmas Past

I know that the multitudes of you who read this homebrewing and beer blog of mine have been eagerly awaiting the promised post about all the Christmas and winter themed beers I bought back in November and December to drink and write about.  I took careful notes of each and soon found that drinking a thick, high alcohol, spiced beer every other day or so got tired fast, and so it drug out longer than expected, and then I didn't care to write about them.  But I promised!  And I found a use for a little journal my mother-in-law gave to me for my birthday!  So now I'm going to write this thing and post it so you all can gain from the beer drinking pain I endured.  The Dude Abides.

The first beers I bought for this tasting experience, about 2/3 of the total beers I tried.