Carmelized Sugar and Witches Brew.

On Wednesday I went ahead and had a brew day, but I didn't end up making The Kitchen Sink like I had planned. I had a call to work early wednesday for the rest of the week up till the minute I was leaving for the holidays, leaving me only the afternoon to get a brew going before I was gone. So I decided not to take on the ambitious beast because it used too many ingredients I didn't have prior experience with.

So I pulled out the next brew I was planning to do a little early. I had been cultivating some Wyeast Abbey Ale I yeast in a growler, and it was ready to go. So here it is.

Witches Brew Dark Strong Abbey Ale.

Id had some success a few batches ago with a hoppy belgian strong, and wanted to mess around more in the style. I had also been meaning to do a trappist style beer too. So I bought the Abbey Ale yeast and then attacked my grain bill like I was making a Dark Strong. We have some Special B malt in there, some CaraVienna and CaraMunich, Crystal 40L, 6lbs of Pilsner malt and 5lb of 2-row.

While that was going on, I decided to use a technique I was going to do on the Kitchen sink as a sort of test run....Caramelized Sugar!

It went pretty well. You can see in the picture above 1lb of sugar early in the process. You heat plain granulated sugar in a pot and keep stirring. It starts clumping up, and then slowly turns into a brown syrup, no water added. At this point its REALLY HOT. hotter than the boiling wort, so learn from my mistake and let it cool down a bit before adding it to your boil. Otherwise you get lots of steam and noise and not fun stuff.

I also split up one of my Papua New Guinea Vanilla beans and started soaking it in vodka. Ill dump that in after high krausen. Im going to be gone for almost 2 weeks from the brew date, when I get back Ill check on it and see whats up. I might throw some oak on this bitch too.

Revving up for the Kitchen Sink

So for the past couple weeks I have been getting ready to do a crazy experimental stout Im calling "Kitchen Sink." Iv found that finding just the right moment to brew it has been a little bit of a hassle. First my local homebrew store was out of some of the malted grains I needed, and then this past thursday night my apartment flooded.

But here I am, hoping to get it done and in a carboy fermenting before I go off for the holidays, and the first step is getting all the adjuncts and special ingredients together. I am not going to post the recipe at this time, but I will let you in on the adjuncts.

First off we have cacao. While originally I had purchased a 8oz box of nestle powder to dump into the boil, a chef friend of mine named Abe said he actually had a bunch of cacao nibs and beans that I could use. So I went over last night and picked these up.



Secondly, while the mash is going, I am going to be making caramelized sugar with this bad boy.

Im doing this based off what people say is a big part of the flavor of the Kuhnhenn Creme Brule Java Stout that I love so much. When that is done, Ill be dumping that late into the boil with the cacao.

I am also going to add a pound of flaked oats and a half pound of lactose sugar.and a vanilla bean from Papua New Guinea. You can see while Im calling it "Kitchen Sink". Stay tuned as I will report later in the week about the recipe and how the brew day went.