Some production and consumption notes:

Saturday I made a pumpkin ale. I have long wanted to make a clone of Souther Tier’s Pumking, but I’m not ready for all-grain brewing yet, so instead I picked up a kit of the on-sale Harvest Feast Pumpkin Ale from Beer and Wine Hobby. This kit consisted of 6.6 pounds of malt extract, with a pound of flaked barley, half a pound of chocolate malt, 2 oz of Hallertau hops for bittering, a can of pumpkin puree for those of us without fresh pumpkin available, two packets of magical ‘pumpkin spice’, the usual priming sugar, and Irish moss for clarification. I opted for the dry yeast version of the kit as my fridge is full. As usual, I started things off by rehydrating the yeast using a stir plate. (Someday I may actually make a yeast starter the night before brew day.) Brewing was straightforward, but I did try a few new things for this batch! I sparged my grain bag with hot water instead of squeezing it, making the total boil volume just shy of four gallons. I actually strained out the hop and protein residue before adding to the fermenter; hopefully this results in less useless sediment at the bottom and more clear beer to drink! The kit instructions said that the gravity of the wort should have been 1.042. In reality, it was 10 points higher, 1.052 after temperature correction! I can’t imagine what may have happened. This brew also calls for racking to secondary and adding a second sachet of pumpkin spices. I don’t have a glass carboy, so I will have to rack to my bottling bucket and then back into my primary fermenter just as I did with my chocolate stout.

The brewing store was busy, and I think they may have given me a yeast that was not quite intended for this beer. They handed me a packet of Safbrew T-58 yeast which is what I used for my “Belgian” honey amber ale. This yeast generates spicy and fruity flavors all its own, so this may be a really weird ale!

My next beer project will be a barleywine based on Death by Barleywine. I bought 10 pounds of dried amber malt extract; a pound of crystal malt and half a pound each of chocolate malt and roasted barley; 1 ounce of Nugget hops for bittering and 3 ounces of Cascade: one for aroma, one for flavor, and one for dry-hopping; a packet of Pasteur champagne yeast to take over once the Safale S04 dies off; and French oak chips for aging. The oak chips take about 6 weeks to fully infuse, at which point I will bottle and let that stuff sit until the bleak midwinter. Mmm.

We also roasted a chicken Saturday night. It was a kosher chicken and that made a serious difference. Moist and juicy! I attempted to make a nice chicken gravy with the drippings, but we were too hungry to wait for it to boil down!

Sunday I attempted to make a Steak and Ale pie with the last of my Park Ave Porter Plus . It was tasty, but the crust didn’t puff up as puff pastry is supposed to! It just got warm and stayed mushy. Bummer :(

Oh, and today while on a stop at the liquor store to get a single bottle of wine, I picked up Sam Adams Imperial Series Stout and Double Bock, a bottle of Troegenator, a Stone Vertical Epic 09.09.09, and a Red Hook Tripel. I hate having a semi-decent beer store right on my walk home from the train.

For Christmas, my parents bought me an Amber Ale kit from Blackstone Valley Brewing Supply. I think I will make it next week, but I think I will modify it somehow. The people from the Homebrewing LJ community recommended steeping orange peel, or adding honey, or trying a different yeast strain. Considering I have an enormous bear of honey, I will probably add about a pound of that. If I can make it to the brewing store, I will get some orange peel and possibly a different yeast as well. Safale T-58 was the specific strain suggested. Beer and Wine claims to have it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have it in stock. Boston Brewin’ may have it; they have no website so I can’t check. I may also add some malto-dextrin and candi sugar, just to see what happens.

Because the ale kit has both extract and grains, I’m going to take the spent grains and try to make bread with them. This recipe might work, but I have actually never made bread by hand before! If I end up with more than 3 cups of grains, I might make two loaves. I’ve found several for the bread machine: Spent-grain beer bread (contains eggs), honey wheat bread, honey wheat/rye bread, herbed spelt or whole wheat bread, and another eggy bread. I have purposefully left out anything that requires a starter for the bread.

On another note, I am considering the following recipes for my next beers:

• Mother Earth Old Ale or this Old Ale with English malt instead of Belgian. To be aged until wintertime!
• Belgian-style ales: This extract kit is an option. Yet another option: Triple Play (extract recipe) or this extract kit (advantage: cheap). I am also considering trying one of the Stone Vertical Epic ales, specifically the 06.06.06 version.
• Extract barleywine recipe from BeerAdvocate. This will require about a month of secondary fermentation on oak chips. (Well, the recipe doesn’t call for it, but I’m going to try it.), likely this coming winter. Alternate: Mindblowing Barleywine
• Southern Tier Pumking clone. To be brewed once #8 is complete and I have enough empty bottles. #9 Delayed until next fall for reasons of timing and funding.
• Dogfish Raison D’Ètre clone. Hard. For springtime 2010 perhaps.

These bring me up to about batch 12. The Free Beer recipe is right out because WTF GUARANA IN BEER? However, there’s no real point in assigning numbers to batches I haven’t brewed!

Southern Tier was nice enough to put all the ingredients for their Imperial Pumking Ale right on the side of the bottle. I will give this a shot for next fall. Let's call it batch 8.

In the meantime, after the saison kit I have is done, my next projects will be FREE BEER (if I can find guarana berries). I looked into the Flying Dog Open Source Beer, but unfortunately it's a lager, and I'm not set up for cold-fermenting or lagering. (YET! See previous entry)

This morning we are heading to brunch with Pete and Shannon, who have just moved to Salem from Rhode Island. On the menu is a goat cheese and tomato frittata, peanut butter waffles, and bacon. (He works at Strega) After we come home, I am going to make a freaking sweet pork roast on the grill. The recipe is based on one from How to Cook Meat as per usual: Apricot-Sausage Stuffed Pork Loin. I will be making the following substitutions: apricots are replaced by apples (because we have apples and apple preserves), I am using a rack of pork instead of boneless pork loin (because I don't have any pork loin, but I have a rack of pork!), and I may tone down the garlic.