We haven’t been blogging, but we have been brewing (and knitting, and sewing, and making soap, and….).

Batch #25 was our first stout, clocking in at 9.5%.  We used a variety of dark malts (crystal, chocolate, “Special B”, smoked, and roasted barley) to get rich flavor we like in stouts, but avoided the darkest malts (like black patent) and only small amounts of some of the darker malts to avoid too much bitterness.  We also had a pound of cacao nibs that we picked up at Lake Champlain Chocolates last summer, which we wanted to infuse.  After some research and dithering (because there are a billion variations on how homebrewers brew with chocolate), we decided to soak them in vodka for a few days and pour the chocolate liquor into the fermentor for second fermentation.

The initial fermentation was explosive.  Fermentation started almost immediately, and fouled the airlock in less than an hour.  I’m glad I put it in the bathtub overnight, because it made a mess in there, blowing the airlock completely out of the neck of the fermentor.  But it quickly settled down.  And the end result is really good — a rich, velvety stout with tons of flavor, but very little bitterness.

Batch #26 was our first wild beer.  We picked up some apples at the farmers market near us, and I’d read that yeast cultured from apple skins was generally good for brewing beer (or cider, obviously).  So I skinned the apple and put the skins in a moderately-strong wort (which had some crystal malt to encourage yeast that could handle that).  It took a few days to begin fermenting, but I was then able to step it up like a normal starter, and then save the yeast for later.

Later turned out to be a few months later, when I brewed with a friend.  I brought the yeast, and he had some malt extract and a big bag of frozen mixed berries.  So we mashed and pasteurized the berries, and added the slurry to the extract wort at the end of the boil, and pitched the wild yeast as soon as it cooled off.

At first, we thought the wild yeast had failed to start, because there was no bubbling activity.  But when we checked it after a week, fermentation was done (and much more efficient than we expected for wild yeast).  The result is like a very dry saison, with some tannin from the berries, and a little fruitiness.

Both of these have been fun to drink, and well-received when we’ve shared them.  So it’s encouraging us to try some new things.