Upcoming recipes

Unfortunately due to school, work, etc. brew days have taken a backseat. Tom and I have one planned coming up. I have a free weekend this weekend and will try something ridiculous. Tom wants to do a traditional German hefeweizen with agave. Sounds awesome. While researching recipe ideas, I came up with an idea for a Weizenbock, American style.

I'll use the German wheat extract, but use some bock style grains in the early stages. Instead of Hallertau and Tettenger hops, I'll use Amarillo. And I'll add agave syrup for flavor. The preliminary name of this beer will be Special Brew, OG 1.070, in honor of Arizona SB 1070. Yep, immigrant recipes and ingredients, made domestically (except for the agave and German grains/extracts). I'll probably go over the 1.070 OG (Original Gangsta (I'm looking at you, Sheriff Joe)) since I plan on using about 8-9 lbs. of malt extract, plus the agave syrup. It will be a dark, foreign flavored beer, that if profiled, I will remove the label.

Sorry for the delay.

January was a busy brewing month. Tom and I brewed up a double batch one weekend -- a Belgian strong ale and a cream ale using some cherry infused whiskey I found at my parent's place over the holidays. The cherry infused whiskey was a recipe they'd use with the cherries from the tree in the back yard. I believe the recipe was something like this:

1 cup whiskey
1 cup sugar
1 cup cherries

let sit for 6 months. Enjoy.

The cherries were removed about 15 years ago, and the decanter sat untouched since then. We threw a vanilla bean in while it sat in the primary and added the infused cherry vanilla whiskey to the secondary.

Both were delicious, but the crowd favorite was the Belgian. I did really enjoy the cherry cream ale though.

Next was a Maarzen recipe that was brewed at the end of February and kegged in March. Unfortunately, the carbonation was a bit off on the early attempts (after 5 hours of kegging), but mellowed over time. A nice beer that was very quaffable.