The Digital Beest » drink http://blog.ajvanbeest.com AJ Van Beest's snark, vitriol, and naval gazing Thu, 27 May 2010 15:28:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Dissapointment Brown http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/archives/523 http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/archives/523#comments Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:43:00 +0000 A.J. Van Beest http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/?p=523 I’ve got a keg full of brown ale. And it’s ok. But not great. I had high-ish hopes for this batch, but honestly, it tastes a whole lot like the red ale I made before. Heck, for that matter, it looks pretty similar, too. It’s got the same thin mouth feel, and occasionally, I get a whiff of wort (mostly the wet barley part) from my glass.

Of course, I did learn a little somethin’ somethin’ from this batch: The Brewer’s Best kits are pretty much crap. I mean, I kind of suspected, but this is just icing on the cake. And now I’ve got a keg full of the stuff, that I’m gonna have to suck down. *sigh* The things I do for my beer…

Of course, it’s not all bad new on the brew front: I also have a carboy of IPA made from a Northern Brewer kit that I’m really looking forward to. It’s sitting in the basement at about 55 degrees, (hopefully) clarifying and gaining a little character for the glass.

I’m thinking, though, that it’s time to move away from kits on to partial — or even full! — mash brews that I can control completely. Look out beerville; here I come!

]]> http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/archives/523/feed 1 Household of drinkers http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/archives/511 http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/archives/511#comments Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:25:39 +0000 A.J. Van Beest http://blog.ajvanbeest.com/?p=511 Yeah, that’s us, alright. Here at Casa del Beest, we take our drinkin’ seriously. It’s Sunday morning, and we’ve got two kinds of tea (one a chai-style thingie made from “scratch” — no, I didn’t go out and pick tasty looking twigs…) and some orange juice on tap. Friday evening, The Boy and I racked five gallons of brown ale into secondary fermentation. Pretty much anytime, any day, we’re up for a good cup of coffee. Perhaps the two biggest signs of how into our cups we are:

  1. The taste of the water can make it or break it (we prefer “wet” with no discernable gas, mineral, or other contaminents), and has occasionally resulted in raised voices
  2. The Boy has never met a cup/glass/bottle of something he didn’t like, especially if it comes in a combo like milk-root beer-ginger beer-coffee-milk-regular beer.

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