Tastings: Cider & Cream Ales

Last week we had our first tastings of my wife’s hard cider, Cream of the Crop (cream ale) and Bean Me Up Scotty (coffee cream ale).

Hard Cider:
The hard cider didn’t turn out the way I expected it to. The cider wasn’t very sweet even after adding more apple juice at bottling. The cider also has a strong alcohol bite, which I wasn’t expecting. The cider is good, with a nice cinnamon after taste. It is definitely not your typical hard cider.

Cream of the Crop:
This cream ale is a nice light beer with a hint of sweetness. Nothing special, but good for these summer days.


Bean Me Up Scotty:
This coffee cream ale turned out great! This my favorite beer to date. Like I have said before, it is not the typical style of beer you would add coffee to, but worked out really well. The sweetness in the cream ale is a great complement to the coffee. It has a nice coffee flavor in the beginning, not too strong but not hidden, with the sweetness coming through on the end.

I had some friends over who were all excited to try it. They gave it rave reviews as well. The only downside to this beer is I only have 14 bottles left. This will definitely be a beer I make again, and in a larger quantity.

I will soon be bottling the Cool Beans (vanilla cream ale) and On The Blues (blueberry cream ale). Look for that post coming soon.

Cheers

Cream Ale & Cider: Bottling

This week I got down to bottling. I started with my wife’s cider. This was a really small batch. This was her first time doing it, so she only made a gallon. From the tasting in bottling, it’s going to be great. It has a really nice cinnamon taste to it, since cinnamon was added in the boil and in the secondary. We added some apple juice when we bottled to make the cider a little sweeter. I look forward to drinking this, if my wife lets me. Unfortunately it’s only a small batch, so only 15 bottles. We juiced some apples and mixed that in with some apple juice, along with some spices my wife threw in. So, the cider should be good to go in two weeks or so.

I also bottled my cream ale this week. I shared in my last post that I really wanted to add some things to the cream ale, but the point of the cream ale was something simple so I could have beer to drink soon. Well, I found the best of both worlds. My wife bought her apple juice in one gallon glass jar containers, so I now have 1 gallon carboys I can experiment in. So, I am making four different varieties out of the cream ale:

“The Cream of the Crop”
This is the straight up cream ale. I bottled 15 bottles. This is a nice light and slightly sweet beer.

“Bean Me Up Scotty”
This is a coffee cream ale. This isn’t the usual style you would add coffee to, but like I said, I wanted to experiment. I added some cold brewed coffee in the bottling bucket to taste. It tasted good in this tasting. I’m excited to see how it turns out. I bottled 18 bottles of this.

“Cool Beans”
This is a vanilla cream ale. I put a gallon of this in the secondary with vanilla beans. Depending on the taste I may add some vanilla flavoring when I bottle it.

“On The Blues”
This is a blueberry cream ale. I added blueberries in my second gallon carboy.
In a couple of weeks I will get these bottled. I’m looking forward to trying out the variety. I love have these small carboys to experiment. More label art will be coming as well.

Cream Ale & Cider

Saturday was another brew day. My beer supply is falling drastically low. I have less then 15 bottles left that are drinkable. I have 50 bottles of Strawberry Blonde Ale, but it is still conditioning, and I have no clue when it will be ready. For this reason I decided to do something simple. I also had a friend coming over to check out the home brewing process. He’s considering diving into the home brew world, but wanted to see what he was getting in to. This is another reason why a simple beer was a good idea. So a cream ale it is. It will be good for the summer. I had my ingredients and was trying to work out a date with my friend to brew. I continued to think of different things I could add to the cream ale to make it better and more complex. I had to continuously remind myself that I was making a simple beer with a quick turnover to have something to drink. I wanted to play around with it, I wanted to make it unique, but sometimes you just want a simple beer. I continued to fight with myself, thinking of orange peels and vanilla beans in the secondary. Even now that sounds so good, and I have to tell myself to shut up. It is apparent that I need to get another brew going soon. We’ll see what ideas the wife has for my next beer. She always has interesting, unique and challenging ideas.

So, Saturday I put together the Cream Ale, super simple. It was fun getting to go over the process with my friend. He was surprised at the simplicity, as I’m sure most people would be. Making beer does not need to be complicated. There are simple ways to do it.

The other week my wife decided she wanted to make cider, so I racked that into the secondary while we were brewing the cream ale. The cider smelled great. It had a great cinnamon apple smell. The clarity is horrific, but I knew this was going to be an issue from the beginning. My wife added a vanilla bean and cinnamon stick to the secondary, after adding cinnamon nutmeg and brown sugar when she boiled it. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

So, we have some cream ale and cider coming up. I’m not sure what’s next, but making this has me itching to make more.

Oh, and it looks like we might have another new home brewer. My friend was excited to try it himself.