Oatmeal Cookie Ale 2

Oatmeal Cookie Ale Label

The Oatmeal Cookie Ale is in the bottle.  The three gallon batch was made for the holiday season and will be bottle conditioned for a Christmas pour.  It's unctuous with the oatmeal and raisin flavors.  I used Maris Otter malt which has become my favorite malt to brew with especially with English beer.  It's sweet and biscuity.  It produces a  nice head and the perfect body.  Also in the grist bill was brown malt which provided the deep brown, but transparent color and provides more taste.   The dark brown sugar which I made with molasses and refined cane sugar provides the deep richness of the oatmeal cookie.  there are no nuts or nut flavor in the beer.  The hop bitterness supports, but doesn't overwhelm, the oatmeal taste.

I also want to report that the English Bitter has been in the keg.  It's sitting in the cellar bulkhead between the inside door and the steel bulkhead door to keep it cool.  I run downstairs and fill up a liter swing-top bottle and keep it in the fridge for dinner.  It's so nice to keep beer on tap.  Someday a kegerator type unit upstairs would be worth it.  Right now though, the cool bulkhead is just fine.

Wacko by Magic Hat

We received a lot of beets from our CSA this late fall and neither Jen nor I are beet eaters.  Out of the earlier bunches, I made some pickled beets and onions for my dad.  Now with the last few bunches I'm going to make a beet beer.  There is an abundance of fermentable sugar in beets and the Belgians use crystalized beet sugar in brewing, called Candi sugar, to increase the body and fermentability of their beer.  From what I've read, there have been beet beers brewed.  According to articles, the color is amazing and the beer does not taste like beets.  One video blog reviewer of Magic Hat's "Wacko" (a commercially brewed beet beer) mentions that the beer has a pale ale aroma but there is something different and that the taste is of an English Pale Ale, but with a vegetable-like quality.  The blogger also reports that that beer is light and thin in body.  Not that's magic Hat's beer, not mine.  I'll see what I can do to make it more interesting.  the recipe and further blog on this beer will follow soon.

The other beer I want to make this winter is a Continental Lager based on the likes of Heineken or Carlsburg from a partial mash of  Weyermann Pilsner malt, DME, Target and Herbruckner hops and Danish lager yeast.  More on this one later.  I'm putting the Rauchbier I blogged about on Sep. 25, 2010, is in on hold since I'm not too keen on mashing outdoors in the really cold weather.  right now partial mashing is fine in the kitchen.