Official Alcohol Discussion Thread!

[DaMexiRican]

Can we get a sticky for this?

What do ya'll prefer to drink? Beer, Wine, Hard Liquor, Wine Coolers? All of them?

I only drink Beer and Hard Liquor. Mint Mojito is about the only thing close to a wine cooler I'll drink though LOL

 

[splax23]

FINALLY HAD SOME FOUNDERS NEMESIS!!!!!!!!!!! and it tasted a little like heaven

 

[Illiciter]

Nice! I've never had of course.. but I always enjoy the "perfect" beer.


I racked my "vanilla" apple cider .. unfortunately the vanilla is so buried I pretty much wasted my time soaking the vanilla bean in the sugar. I guess I'll need to get like 3 or 4 vanilla beans and just soak them sons o beyotches in the cider in a secondary for a week or two. That'll bring the vanilla to the front, which may or may not be what I'm aiming for... I really wanted the vanilla sugar to work it's magic instead. At least it doesn't taste like sh*t!

My next beer I'm going to brew is my orange pale ale. The first version seemed to have the orange flavor but not enough hop bite to make it crisp so I'm adjusting the recipe to account for this and will be doing a dunking of hop charges all through the boil with cascades and some kent goldings with a big bitter charge of galena at the very end of the boil - Should be interesting!

 

[splax23]

I guess only 500 cases of this stuff was released and it is harder then hell to find. I usually can only buy 1 or 2 bottles. I got a few stores that have yet to get it and hopefully plan on buying some. Alpha I want you to try this stuff haha. The next couple months is our best time weather wise to trade. plus KBS comes out march 13th

 

[Illiciter]

I guess only 500 cases of this stuff was released and it is harder then hell to find. I usually can only buy 1 or 2 bottles. I got a few stores that have yet to get it and hopefully plan on buying some. Alpha I want you to try this stuff haha. The next couple months is our best time weather wise to trade. plus KBS comes out march 13th

yeah I'm going to get rolling on my orange pale this weekend.. We're still getting freezing temps here but I guess in the next week or so the overnight temps will lift just above freezing.

I'm worried if the brew sits in a truck and freezes you will get a box of beerslushies


I got your EKU already, and while the vanilla apple cider didn't quite turn the way I hoped I can still send some if you liked it last time, because it's basically the same stuff just without the lavender, although I could probably add the lavender if you want

 

[splax23]

no thats fine without the lavender. you were also saying somethign about boulevard? whats good from there?

 

[Illiciter]

Boulevard.. let's see I can get you their Irish Ale, Singlewide IPA is pretty popular, their pale ale is what made them famous although I prefer sierra nevada's but that's a pretty close competition, Bully Porter is alright and dry stout.. They also sell what they call their smokestack series beers.. they come in 750mL bottles... There's varying degrees on how good these are and to be honest it's rare I come across one that makes me go crazy, but if I find it they have a doublewide IPA that is pretty darn tasty

edit: they vary in price too.. like the Irish usually fetches for 8.99 a 6 pack, a 750 of their doublewide is 11.99 I think the last time I saw it - all the others I listed are about 7.99 a 6pack

They make good beers so you really can't go wrong with whatever suits your fancy

 

[DaMexiRican]

I got two bottles of Racilla Añejo yesterday

 

[Horhay]

I might pick up a bottle of Don Julio 1942 again I ran out of my first bottle. Was very happy with it possibly one of the best tequilas I've had.

 

[MacDaddyOJack]

I recently had some heart palpitations and everything checked out ok, but I had my cholesterol checked as well just as a precaution. My HDL was normal but approaching the low limit so I started checking to see what can increase your HDL. Aside from the usual (exercise, no smoking, healthy fats, etc.) alcohol can actually increase your HDL levels. One or two drinks a day for men and one a day for women. Any more than that and you may be doing more harm than good, but rest easy when you guys kick one back on the couch tonight, it's good for you

 

[splax23]

hey did anybody ever age anything with bourbon? I want to age a russian imperial stout but I dont need a big barrel of it. Could i just soak some oak chips (that you get at the homebrew store) in some good tasting bourbon? then throw them in secondary for awhile?

 

[Illiciter]

hey did anybody ever age anything with bourbon? I want to age a russian imperial stout but I dont need a big barrel of it. Could i just soak some oak chips (that you get at the homebrew store) in some good tasting bourbon? then throw them in secondary for awhile?

That's exactly what you can do, and it actually doesn't need to age as long as in a barrel. Since there is more beer exposed to the oak chips rather than the long process of the beer soaking in and out of the barrel walls over a long period of time.

I'd say if you soaked oak chips for a week or two you'd get plenty of the tannins out of them... My only thought though is when you soak the chips in the bourbon you're going to drive a lot of that oakyness into the bourbon rather than vice versa, so if you just throw the soaked oak chips into the beer rather than the bourbon, I would imagine the flavor profile would be lighter than say if you just took the oaked bourbon and poured it in at bottling time? Maybe do a taste test of the bourbon to see if it's got what you're lookin for...

Sounds like an experiment to see which way would give you the best bang for your buck!

 

[splax23]

That's exactly what you can do, and it actually doesn't need to age as long as in a barrel. Since there is more beer exposed to the oak chips rather than the long process of the beer soaking in and out of the barrel walls over a long period of time.

I'd say if you soaked oak chips for a week or two you'd get plenty of the tannins out of them... My only thought though is when you soak the chips in the bourbon you're going to drive a lot of that oakyness into the bourbon rather than vice versa, so if you just throw the soaked oak chips into the beer rather than the bourbon, I would imagine the flavor profile would be lighter than say if you just took the oaked bourbon and poured it in at bottling time? Maybe do a taste test of the bourbon to see if it's got what you're lookin for...

Sounds like an experiment to see which way would give you the best bang for your buck!

So i could just take some bourbon and toss it in the beer before bottling?

 

[MacDaddyOJack]

I've always heard of doing it with cubes or chips, I've never heard of anyone using the actual bourbon that the chips were in. Maybe it would work though, I guess it all depends on how much bourbon flavor you want. I really like bourbon and will sometimes just drink it on the rocks. But for beer, I would probably try just the chips first. I like the idea of the experiment though!

 

[Illiciter]

So i could just take some bourbon and toss it in the beer before bottling?

Yeah, to MacDaddy's point it is generally the chips or cubes dropped into secondary after soaking. I read about oak chips/cubes being tossed in to secondary after soaking in bourbon, but I've talked to a few brewers who will just oak the bourbon and then pour a measured amount into a sample a little at a time until it's got the right bourbon/oak flavor they're looking for and then they just scale the dose up to their batch size and add the bourbon. Pretty sure these guys keg though because I'd imagine the alcohol volume the bourbon adds would inhibit yeast from producing carbonation, but I suppose if you're diluting it and only adding ~1%ABV total it may not be an issue....

I know when I really want to drive home vanilla flavor I soak the beans in vodka to extract the biggest amount of flavor and add it before bottling.. so I figure the same would be true for oak/bourbon flavor

 

[splax23]

yeah i have a keg i could definitely use. you gave me an idea...Vanilla bean bourbon aged RIS mmmmmm

 

[Illiciter]

yeah i have a keg i could definitely use. you gave me an idea...Vanilla bean bourbon aged RIS mmmmmm

now that sounds absolutely delicious

 

[splax23]

yeah i think i will try to do that possibly

 

[Illiciter]

I got a little reckless just saturday doing my Orange Pale Ale

Seeing as how I had hops just hanging out (I order from hopsdirect.com), and an abundance of them at that, I figured I'd experiment with an over the top late hop addition

so here's how I ran my recipe:

6lbs extra light dme
1lb crystal 60 to steep from 120-165 degrees
1oz sweet orange peel at 10 minutes to flameout
1oz Galena hops (14%aa) for 60 mins
1oz Cascade (4.3%) for 60 mins
1oz Cascade for 30 minutes
4oz Cascade for 10 minutes

So knowing that I was hop bombing the beer I figured it'd be pretty hoppy, that is, until I ran the numbers through the beer calculators and got 94.6 IBUs... For the layman comparison if you've ever had Sierra Nevada's Torpedo IPA, I'm breaking that bitterness by about 14-20 points.

This is a bitter orange beer. Unfortunately, I have at least another week of it sitting in primary before I can even measure/sample it... For some reason I was certain the 1 pound of crystal will give it enough malty sweetness to counter the bitterness enough to make it drinkable and crispy, but looks like I might have overdone my experiment and created a doublewide orange APA


To hell with it, I'll still drink it!

 

[splax23]

actually that sounds delicious. i feel like it will smell amazing as well. let me know how it turns out.

 

[MacDaddyOJack]

Massive hop-head here, that sounds wonderful. Cascade is one of my favs too. I would have liked to have saved one of those final four ounces and used it in the secondary though.