Talk About "Dead Soldiers"

I just sampled the extraordinarily bitter ale I brewed a while back, and I have to say, I am quite pleased.

I'm not sure what to call it. On a whim, I labeled the recipe "Senseless Cruelty Ale" in my brewing software, but I think I can do better.

Most brewers fart around with clearly defined styles. They'll try to make their own versions of German lagers and Irish dry stouts and so on. I do that sometimes, but I also like to yank bizarre original recipes out of my rear end, and that's how this ale was created. I tried a bottle of Flying Dog's Snake Dog Ale, and I decided I wanted to do something sort of similar, only fruitier, and I threw together ingredients that seemed likely to get me where I wanted to be.

This thing is a moderately heavy (1.057 original specific gravity) ale made from Maris Otter and 10L crystal malt, fermented at room temperature with Trappist ale yeast and hopped ruthlessly with Chinook hops. I believe the Maris Otter and the hops are sort of close to the Flying Dog recipe, but I very much doubt that they use Belgian yeast and ferment at 75 degrees, and I would be amazed if they load the grist with crystal malt.

What I ended up with is an extremely bitter beer (50+ IBU) that's really easy to drink because the crystal malt adds sweetness. And judging from the way I feel at the moment, it's pretty strong, too. Let me check my brewing software. Okay, it says I went from 1.057 to 1.016, giving an ABV of 5.3%. Gee, it seems like more.

I think the next time I make this, I may cut the Maris Otter with a very light ale malt. And I think it would be better if I knocked the starting specific gravity down closer to 1.050. Maybe I should be a real son of a bitch and add a pound of sugar, just to raise the alcohol content.

I'm glad this stuff is so good, because I recently had to dump two full kegs of beer that was undrinkable. Something was wrong with the ingredients, because the beer tasted like grass. I thought I had made a booboo with the hopping, but apparently, that was not the case, because when hops make beer taste grassy, it goes away. The off flavor in my two kegs never faded.

Supposedly, grain that has been stored too long can give off a grassy flavor. That's what happened here, in my opinion.

I really need to brew more wheat beer. The magnificent batch I made recently is more than half gone. It was astoundingly good.

Guess I better get online and start ordering ingredients.