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This is the story of two more firsts for Upship! - a barleywine and an american light beer. The plan? To start two very different - and yet very similar - brews side by side, see how they progress, and ultimately: how they compare side by side with some of my favorite beer drinking buddies! Also, I'm going to provide you with a chance to vote - starting..........now - for which of the two beers you expect to turn out to be the most favored among these chosen beer snobs and fanatics. At the end I'll throw together some crude graphical representation of what you as the readers expected at different points throughout the brew, and how each poll stacks up to the end result!
At this moment the Barleywine is in it's secondary fermentor - the OG was approximately ~1.08 and the FG at the time of racking was ~1.01 providing about 9% ABV. I'm hoping to see a little more by bottling time. My laziness with this batch may have affected the final outcome of the brew. Due to a failure in the post boil filter operation a large amount of hops made it into the fermentor and stayed there during the two weeks of primary fermentation. It was hoppy at the time of racking into the secondary but still tasted very much so like good beer, and even more so like barleywine. So, far so good.
The light beer is currently in primary fermentation - looks like it will be a hair darker than I was hoping for a true light beer; more of an amber. Turns out the Golden LIGHT extract I used was much heavier than I expected. I should have used much more Light DME and/or rice syrup solids to get the proper body and color. My friend Jimbo will never let me live this down...but, I have developed a new appreciation for "those damn light beer brewers" in the commercial industry. Additionally, a true american light beer is lagered, I used an ale yeast but I intend to "lager" it while it's in the secondary.
Next up: Irish Red Ale! Mead! And Kegging! The light beer is going to be the first beer to go into the keg.
Until then,
Jack
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