Brew Day, April 2009

Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

This Sunday, at the request (insistence?) of my Lady Wife, I will be brewing a Cherry Brown Ale. I’m basing the foundation (the Brown Ale) on the Southern English Brown Ale recipe from Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew. It looks like a solid brew, as have been every other recipe I’ve tried from the book. The plan is to let it primary as per normal, then rack it onto a can of Oregon Cherry Puree; allow it to re-ferment to completion, then keg. It should be a simple beer, and hopefully it will turn out well.

I also plan to attack the non-alcoholic brews again, trying another root beer. I believe I learned from the last root beer I tried (which ended up a case of gushers). In the grand scheme, as long as the flavor and mouthfeel are there, and there are *only* sufficient fermentables for priming the bottles, it should be OK. Or, it could end up a foul, vile brew. I’ll be boiling up the ‘regular’ ingredients, less the sugar; cooling the ‘tea’ of sassafras root, etc., then adding the entirety of a bag of Splenda. That will give it non-fermentables for sweetness and mouthfeel. Carbtabs will provide sugar for carbonation. A bold experiment? Well, an experiment, at any rate. Time will tell how it turns out. (This recipe will be #82 in Misha’s Little Black Book.)