Red Dress Raspberry Wheat Unbottled! Stovepipe Crow Bottled! Celebrations in the Kitchen!

First bottle of Red Dress Raspberry Wheat got opened tonight. It was bottled up 4/7, so close enough to a full month gone by in the bottle. It looks great, but the raspberry isn't coming through near as much as I'd like, either in aroma or taste. I'd rather have raspberry overkill than "just barely there." Lesson noted for next time out with a similar batch. Still, it's very drinkable.

We'll keep a bottle in the fridge and test it week by week to see if it hits a higher stride shortly. Being a fairly light tasting wheat, it's not going to handle sitting around for too long! (For those who care, this was my first and only brew that strayed from pulling it's name from a Ray Wylie Hubbard song. The name for this one was inspired by the James McMurtry song!)

Speaking of sitting around awhile, B) Endarkenment 2.0 (the chocolate peanut butter stout) should be up for tasting soon. I'm not gonna expect much from the first couple tastings--it took six months for first batch Endarkenment to really start hitting its stride. I still have a six-pack of 1.0 in the back of the fridge to do some comparison tastings once 2.0 hits, but it might be apples to oranges--the peanut butter just didn't hit at all in v1.0, and I'm pretty sure it's going to come out much stronger this time around.

Choctaw Bingo (my milk chocolate stout) will hopefully be ready even sooner than B) Endarkenment 2.0, being a much simpler and more straightforward brew. We'll toss a couple bottles in the fridge for next weekend to see what's going on with it, too!

The mole stout I've been working on is going in bottles shortly. Here's a short view of the gravity test sample:

Dropped enough in my hydrometer test tube to see if the final gravity had changed since moving the brew into the secondary fermenter. I didn't expect any change, since I'd only added the dried peppers, some raw cacao powder (no additives) and a couple cinnamon sticks. Still best to check! Gave the test sample a taste at bottling time to see if the chocolate, smoked serrano peppers and the cinnamon stick flavors came through as strongly as I'd hoped. I would have liked a little more cinnamon and its inherent sweetness, but the smoky pepper and chocolate is spot on. Fresh from the secondary, this is definitely the best beer I've ever made. A couple months in the bottles to let it carbonate properly and let the flavors meld and this is gonna be one of the best beers I've ever tasted! Woot! The smokiness and heat from those smoked serranos just hits all my buttons! It might be a little too hot for many folk, but it's gonna hit ALL my buttons!

A quick shout out to my friends at Midwest Supplies: I work nights, so it's often difficult for me to get out and purchase supplies locally...so I buy a LOT of stuff online. I recently received a shipment of yeast from Midwest, but there was a slight mixup with the shipment: they'd forgotten the ice packs I ordered with the liquid yeast. I realize yeast is a little more resilient than we sometimes give it credit for, but I also work at Amzn and know how freaking hot those trucks get sitting in the sun, so I always kick in the extry 79¢ for an ice-pack. A quick phone call the next morning, and they rushed replacements out the door with two-day shipping. Their customer service couldn't have been more courteous nor more successful at quickly resolving my problem! A+ job all around!!! Outstanding and really sold me on ordering from them again!

And Bluegrass residents, don't forget to mark your calendars for the upcoming Alltech Brews and Food Fest!!! $35 ticket gets you a 3 oz. commemorative tasting glass, 15 beer tickets to trade for fills, free samples of all sorts of food and boatloads of live music! (Coralee and the Townies will be there--6:30 pm?--there's half your ticket's worth right there!) There are some really exciting big name breweries attending, so your biggest problem will be deciding which awesome brew to try next! Make a list of must-haves ahead of time! Bring your friends and expect a fantastic time...y'all can taste different beers and compare notes to hone in on your favorites! (Special ticket prices are available for designated drivers, too!) And yeah, I know...their own website has all this information and more. I'm just really super excited about this event, and hope to see you all there! (Yes! all 5 of you who ever read this far into my silly babblings!)

Drink like a chimney and jump like a crocodile, folks! til next time...