We're expecting.....

A NEW BEER!!!
(what were you thinking?!)

After a somewhat disastrous batch of a coffee porter that tasted mainly like stale, carbonated coffee, we were on a bit of a beer hiatus. But a few months ago we decided to brew again and are trying our first non-kit beer recipe from Clone Beers. It's a clone of Unibroue's La Fin Du Monde - a 9% triple fermented Belgian ale. Blonde in color, like most Belgians it's a complicated beer that is slightly tart, slightly spicy, and all around well-balanced. We've been big fans of Unibroue for at least a decade (h/t to Angela for ordering me my first bottle of Trois Pistoles at Jabberwocky's back in the summer of 2001), and have wanted to try producing our own Belgian ale for some time now.

We brewed back in May before it got really hot. As an example of our dedication to this batch, we kept the a/c at 73F during the primary fermentation so that nothing got too hot. In comparison, we keep the temp around 83 all the rest of the time. That was a gloriously cool week in our house. Even with the cooler temps, we had a bit of a beer explosion and some over spill during the primary fermentation. So far it looks like nothing was contaminated, but we've been biting our nails over the overflow. Nothing like spending months making and fermenting a beer only to have it be a petri dish of bacteria. At this point everything's been bottled and is just hanging out and doing its thing. We sampled an early bottle a few weeks ago and the flavors are getting there. It definitely needs more time in the bottle, but it's pretty close to the flavors present in Fin du Monde. For some reason the carbonation is pretty weak, but we're not sure if that's the whole batch or just that particular bottle.

So now it sits and ages. It should be done in October just in time for a dissertation submission celebration.


Oh yeah, and in order to commemorate the birth of our new brew, we decided to have a baby. It's a boy and he should be arriving in late November - just in time for a nicely aged Belgian. (take a peek at my WIP bar).