Home Brew Update

After waiting a little over a month for it to develop, the Brewski Brothers' Hopalong Hefner Hefe is a huge success. Multiple samples have been passed out with 100% positive reviews so far. The beer pours a nice opaque copper/orange color with a moderate, foamy white head that gives off tart blood orange in the aroma. The flavor is extremely balanced with loads of blood orange, but no sweetness. The finish lingers for a long time with notes of orange peel and tart blood orange. This will definitely be a brew done again by us. Perhaps once again before the end of the summer... it may have to wait 'til next summer as we have lots of other exciting beers to come.

We now also have an update on our Paleolithic Imperial Pale Ale. It has been conditioning in the bottle now for two weeks, so we decided to sample one bottle this weekend to check the progress. Well, what a surprise we got. The beer poured a very dark copper color... nearly brown with almost no head. The aroma produced lots of caramel maltiness and plenty of floral hops. The flavor first hits you with loads of malty sweetness that is then counterbalanced by grapefruity hops. The finish stays with bitter hops and a pronounced alcohol burn in the chest. Damn! We each had 5 oz between us and were feelin' pretty sleepy afterward. We assumed this beer to be around 8.5-9% alcohol, but after looking at our ingredient list and seeing we added over 13 lbs of sugars, and given that 5 oz made each of us pretty tired, this beer is lookin' to be more around 11%. It also became apparent that the beer we had produced is not an Imperial Pale Ale. It certainly is hoppy, but the malt character is also very pronounced. After a minor debate and some thinking, it was decided that we have our barleywine... and thus, we give you Old Van Barleywine, Dude. We will see how this one has progresses while aging the bottle around another month or two.