Strawberry Fields and Espresso Trees

The past two days I've been working on something fun. For the first time, I'm creating my own recipes for new beers! Until now, I've been using recipe kits from Northern Brewer. Now, however, I am taking a step to be a little more creative.

This all came about because of a post on the Northern Brewer forums about someone trying out an experimental Strawberry Ale. He had tremendous success, and posted the recipe online. So, using this recipe as a base, I tweaked it. First, I converted it from all-grain to extract. Then, I raised the gravity a bit, added some Carapils malt to it to get a bit more color, and changed the hops used. All in all, I formulated the recipe to conform to the Blonde Ale guidlines (BJCP #3a, though the beer will eventually be in category #20). After brewing this beer and letting it ferment for a bit, I'm going to rack it onto about 5-7 lb. of frozen, quartered strawberries. I'll let that sit/ferment/infuse for about a week, and then I'll bottle it! Overall, I think it's going to be delicious!

The other beer that I'm working on is an Espresso Imperial Stout. Basically what it is is a dark beer, high gravity beer to which I'm going to add some espresso. This will give it a nice flavor, and a beautiful, creamy white head. I'm basing this recipe off of another brewer who, in turn, based his off of the Brew Your Own Magazine. The all-grain version of this recipe won first place in its category (BJCP #21a) at the Upper Mississippi Mashout, a very prestigious homebrew competition. I'm changing the original recipe to conform more to the Russian Imperial Stout guidelines (BJCP #13f) so that it can be aged a little longer in the bottle. I'm hoping to use the espresso from a local coffee roaster here in town. She makes great coffee, so I'm going to talk to her about getting some espresso for this recipe on Monday (possibly).

I hope these two recipes go well. I'll be brewing/tweaking them over the next few months, so it definitely gives me a new creative outlet for my brewing and something to talk about on my blog! Also, due to the large number of batches I have in the works, I now have a brewing schedule written out so that I can make sure I get everything done that I want to before I have to move. I don't know if you can tell how excited I am, but I'm really looking forward to this! I'll give more info as it comes, but until then, "Prost!"

Picture courtesy of Julien Haler from Paris, France.