Eva

Originally I hadn't planned on giving the "Kitchen Sink" beer much interest or discussion here, but when racking into secondary yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor, even only 1 week into fermentation. I decided that a beer this surprisingly tasty should be paid its due respects, so welcome Dierksenkougan Eva into the catalogue of beers. She's a brown ale, basically, of significant strength, made with 10 kinds of malt. Definately one of a kind, but luckily, I wrote enough notes on her that if she's a winner (which she's shaping up to be), I'll be able to repeat brew her in the future. A link to her recipe and hopefully a label of sorts will be up in the near future.

Before that, though, I have to bury the hatchet on my search for a new job. Cold Stone is getting boringly out of hand, and I'm compelled to find work that I actually care about. The big news is that I drove out to Galesburg today and visited Bell's brewing facility, and left a cover letter, application, and resume. Among other places, such as Imperial Beverage Distributers, and Gallagher's Pub, I'm setting my sights on some sort of beer/brewing related employment for the summer months, and hopefully beyond. I've procrastinated on this issue far too long, so it's nice to get moving on it. I'll be sure to post the news of those endeavors as soon as I know anything.

As far as the other beers, Ella is still mellowing away in the carboy. Yesterday's taste revealed a great beer that, like most Belgians, does an excellent job of masking it's enormous alcohol content (something like 10.5%, if I can recall). It should be excellent, but this one is a labor of patience. Even if she's drinkable, I'm going to leave her in the carboy as long as I can hold out, then in bottles for even longer. I want to enjoy my first cold, carbonated taste of her at her prime.

Mariah is about ready to be enjoyed from the bottles. I've had a few bottles in the last couple of days to track taste changes and carbonation. Luckily, a lot of the bad, sweet flavors seem to be rapidly disappearing, and I'm not entirely sure why. But I think that a month or more of aging will grant her great improvement.

Anywho, not sure what's next on deck. I might utilize our Whole Foods supplier downtown and get some rye malt and fresh Michigan honey to make some sort of beer, and hopefully use up these raspberries that are taking up room in my freezer. All three might make a good summer spritzer of some sort, and now that the weather is improving, it might just be the perfect timing for it.

Sam