• Review – St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout

    August 23, 2012 Author: Scott
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    Today Chris and I are reviewing St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout.  We’re t his house today, just to change things up a little. As a side note, the ride up I95 during rush hour wasn’t too bad.  He says it can be much worse.

    We’re doing this review today after reading a recipe for a Bloody Mary using St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout.  This will be a 2 part review, with the first part focusing on just the beer, and the second part will be a review of Draft Magazine’s recipe for a Bloody Mary.

    In our ongoing review series we’ll be covering the following 5 items:

    • Appearance
    • Aroma
    • Mouthfeel
    • Flavor
    • Aftertaste

    Here is a quick guide for the beginner http://indybeers.com/beer-tasting-guide/. At the bottom of that page is an HTML template that can be used in our comments if you would like to post your own reviews along with us.

    About McAuslan Brewing:

    Based out of Montreal, Québec McAuslan Brewing began operations in January of 1989.

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/bierestambroise

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bierestambroise

    Appearance

    Scott: A nice nutty brown with a thickly bubbled head.

    Chris: Poured nicely with a small moca head.

    Aroma

    Scott: This one is teeming with aroma.  I’m getting caramel, molasses, espresso, and chocolate

    Chris: Awesomeness. Roasted coffee with hints of chocolate.

    Mouthfeel

    Scott: Very light and creamy feeling with a good medium carbonation.

    Chris: Medium thick body and medium carbonation. I was somewhat surprised as this is not as creamy as I expected. Excellent, non the less.

    Flavor

    Scott: A few of these will go down very easily.  I’m not generally a fan of oatmeal stouts, but this one is spot-on delicious.  Roasted malt, maybe some caramelized sugar, and a nice finish of bitter chocolate.

    Chris: Yummy, oatmeal deliciousness. It is has smooth roasted sweet flavors from start to finish with hints of chocolate throughout.

    Aftertaste

    Scott: A little bitterness with a nice espresso flavor.  Unquestionably pleasant.

    Chris: The coffee flavors last, but are not too bitter.

    Final Thoughts

    Scott: I should have bought more of these, but at $10.25 a 4 pack, they can be a little cost prohibitive. 5/5

    Chris: This is an excellent, 5 star, oatmeal stout!

     

     

  • Home Brewing – The first batch

    March 16, 2012 Author: Scott
    1 Comment

    Mathew and I brewed the first batch of beer together, and it was a lot of fun. Here are the pictures.

    Having never brewed beer before, I took the easy method of buying a kit.

     

    This was most of what was in the kit, after I washed and sanitized everything.

     

    I now have a water filter at the house, but the first few times I brewed I bought filtered water.

     

    We were using a Brewers Best recipe, the red ale.

     

    Looks red to me.

     

    After the 20 minute steep, we pulled out the grains.

     

    After coming up to boil we added the liquid malt extract (LME)...

     

    And the bittering hops...

     

    Check out that action shot!!

     

    Well, it was our first time and we left the lid on the pot. Too much heat resulted in a small boil over.

     

    With 5 minutes to go we added the aroma hops.

     

    My father had stopped by and gave my brother and me a hand adding the hops in.

     

    He also helped by taking this picture of Mathew and me cooling the wort with the wort chiller.

     

    We were able to go from boiling to 75 degrees in about 10 minutes.

     

    We recycled the water from a cooler filled with ice water.

     

    This did not work well and the newer setup is using a 10" stainless steel strainer and just dumping the pot into the bucket.

     

    Well, that is it for brewing, now it's time for other things.

     

    After a week, we needed to move from primary to secondary fermentation.

     

    Looks like we lost about a half gallon to evaporation.

     

    I no longer use the siphon and instead just put one bucket above the other and let gravity do the work.

     

    We, of course, had to taste the beer at this point in the process.

     

    It was flat and wasn't cold, but we both said, "It doesn't suck!"

     

    Much easier this way.

     

    I did a lot of reading, and everyone said bottling is a pain in the butt, so I bought a kegging setup.

     

    After two weeks we moved the beer to the keg.

     

    I needed to mount the taps on the fridge, which was really easy.

     

    And with the whole thing done, we were ready to drink beer!!!

     

    As of this writing, I'm now on batch six, and LOVING making my own beer.

     

    I no longer use the kits and have started experimenting with various styles.

     

    But I like having two beers on tap!!!!