Last week we transferred the K02 Smoked Brown Ale to kegs, and the small taste sample was promising. The beer had a malty and fruity aroma, coupled with a lightly roasted and malty flavour. I guess the malts I smoked could have been in the smoke-box a bit longer, since I couldn’t detect any smokey flavour at all. Perhaps it will come forth with age. Otherwise we’ll just have to call it a Brown Ale instead. Gravity had fallen to 1.013 from 1.062, giving it an ABV of 6.2%.

Last week we also brewed up an APA/IPA-hybrid (I myself couldn’t make it to the brewday), which has currently been in the fermenter for a week. The beer has a simple malt bill (pale ale, munich, carapils and crystal) and has been hopped with Cascade, Citra and Mosaic (aiming for an IBU of 50). Efficiency was very high, and we ended up with an OG of 1.067 instead of 1.055, meaning the beer will be quite a lot stronger than intended. Hopefully the beer won’t be unbalanced, especially since the IBUs are probably around 45 now because of the decreased utilization from increased gravity. The beer is fermented with WLP002 that we harvested and washed from the K02 batch.

On Sunday we will be brewing a Schwarz/Doppelbock, which will be our first attempt at brewing a dark lager. I’m not really a fan of light-bodied heavily roasted beers, so we decided to go for a bock beer, brewed with munich as the base malt, to give it a big and malty backbone. The malt bill will include some pilsner malt for enzyme activity, and some crystal and chocolate malt for increased flavour complexity. The beer will be non-traditionally hopped with Motueka, mostly because I have some old 2010 harvest in the freezer, and I figured since we will only be adding hops at 90 and 30 minutes, the hop variety won’t have that much of an impact on flavour and aroma, especially with a long 3 month lagering period. We will be fermenting it with W34/70, and are aiming for an OG around 1.080-1.085, which will put the ABV close to 8.5-9% depending on how dry it ferments.