The belgian IPA- is my attempt good?

I ain't so sure yet. The beer sat for 3 weeks in the conical. I used s-33 dried yeast from Safale (the edme strain). It has a dominant yeast driven taste. Heavy on the clove flavor. I just compared it with a version of Randy Mosher's Pirate stout brewed with the same yeast. It too had a strong yeast flavor when first kegged. It appears to have matured and some of the flavors of the roasted barely, coriander, and orange peel are coming through. I guess that means I need to wait on this Belgian IPA thing and see if the yeast flavor diminishes and more of the hops come through. I dry hopped with home grown cascades in the keg. Maybe that flavor and aroma will kick in. We shall see.

Next up-- Straight up West Coast IPA for Mr Jason Ward. I promised to brew some for his wedding reception on July 18th. I had better snap to it.

Current Brew- Belgian IPA

Karl and I brewed on Sunday. This was an experiment. Last time we brewed together we did an all grain late hopped IPA. This time we used did a extract/steeped specialty grain IPA. The bittering hops were in the form of Northern Brewer's Hop Shot. It is a hop concentrate that comes in a syringe. To bitter your beer add 1 ml of Hop Shot for every 10 bittering units desired. We were doing a beer with a starting gravity of 1.060-.065. We went with the full 5 ml dose- 50 IBU's. For aroma Simcoe hops were added at the end of the boil. The specialty grains were German Munich, 120 lovibond crystal malt, and a pinch of Chocolate malt. We also threw in a 6 oz. pyramid shaped chunk of sugar called piloncillo. This is a raw sugar popular in Mexico. Randy Mosher and Rick Bayless would be proud. The bulk of the fermentables were Northern Brewer's Organic Light Liquid Malt Extract. For yeast we used Safale S-33 (edme strain). It tends to push the beer towards a belgian in terms of yeast flavor. So we have an american hopped, mexican sugared, belgian yeasty IPA. It is happily fermenting. We look forward to tasting it.

Brewing is Great, Beer is Good

Here we go. It's the big show. A new blog.

Kingfisher Brewers started when Chet Crowser and I started brewing in his Grandparents garage in 2001. Those were the good old days. We brewed often and enjoyed the fruits of our labors on a nightly basis. Now Chet lives in Lolo, Mt. I live in the historical wonderland of Rapid City's West Blvd. neighborhood. I'm told Chet still brews a bit. I brew a bit too. I don't think either of us brew as much as we would like, definately not as much as we used to.

Karl, my little big brother, has been my brew partner lately. It was his idea to blog about it.

So, my newest brew partner and I have started to get serious. In other words, it's brew time. The blog will keep us honest. (I don't know what that means.) The blog will keep track of our brew days and our progress.

Keep the faith.