The "Weird Beer" thread

Mango IPA, yes, easy to visualize. But Green curry?

Well heck, I do love curry, so I'd probably drink it if it wasn't a complete drainpour.

Honey chipotle weizenbock sounds delicious. Although that would certainly be "weird" for a weird beer party, I have to say that of your list, amongst the beer geeks at least, that one doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary.

Rosemary and juniper, eh? Well MrOH's an my juniper pale ale project resulted in tasty juniper ales. They were both lightly spiced, not over-spiced, and I think both of our batches were big successes. Could it have rosemary added? Probably. I can see those flavors blending well, rather than clashing.

What were your impressions of the rosemary/juniper beer? when did you add rosemary? how much?was it fresh? etc etc. I'm probably not going to rush out to create a rosemary/juniper ale at this time, but perhaps next time I do the juniper ale I'll split it up, and try a Mr Beer or 3 gallon better bottle sized batch with some rosemary in it.

 

I would check the Juniper Pale Ale Project blog and thread that MrOH and myself did. Both beers came out tasty, and IMO with enough, but not too much juniper. You could possibly get away with a little more, or perhaps the same amount slightly earlier in the boil, but a lot more and I think you'd have gin beer. I can see how rosemary might have a synergistic effect with juniper tho. I personally think that our base malt and crystal selections/quantities complimented the juniper well. Everyone that drank the beer liked it, and no-one complained of too much juniper.

As interesting as it sounds, I think I'll pass on the green curry beer. If I were to try such a beast, it would be a 2.4 gallon batch in my Mr Beer keg. However, I would do as you suggest and make my own curry. Fish beer doesn't sound too appealing.

The oddball saison on my Mr Beer keg has krausened and is winding down fermentation. Conditioning till Aug 22nd or so. Can't wait to see how it comes out, as it contains the dreaded amber DME.

Maybe for the next one I'll use dark DME, with plenty of tettnanger, some crystal malt, and a mini-mash of 6-row/maris otter, T-58 yeast, plus, hmmm... need a weird ingredient. I'll find something at the LHBS, perhaps a single star of anise and some red wheat....

I'll essentially be doing 2.4 gallon mini-batches using tettnanger until that pound of tettnanger is gone, because they're leaf and I need to use them. Then I'll use up the willamette, then break into the belma, etc. Only the tettnanger (at my house at least) is leaf, the rest are pellets so I'm less concerned about their age. They're all frozen tho, so I'm not really that concerned about it.

*of course this may in fact be a great recipe for drainpour ale

 

Those both sound abfab!

Well, they all sound tasty, but abfab is a special kind of adjective that you can't just throw around.

 

That sounds absolutely foul. Do send me a bottle tho.

 

Absolutely Fabulous. <------ (note the sunglasses)

 

Just popped a 2-week test bottle of my mini-batch of weird saison strangeness that I made in my Mr Beer keg. It's strange, but is strangely good too. The T-58 seems to have handled the less steady and overall higher temperatures* of my room quite well. It's quite "saison-y," and I'd have to say that for this particular application, it passed the test.

And for my first test of the dreaded (non-extra-super-duper-ultra-mega-light) AMBER malt extract... it's just fine. This beer's color is spot on for what I imagined, and is a beautiful deep orange, with reddish notes. I understand the theoretical reasons why someone might use light extract, and understand the theoretical ways in which this might offer "more control of the final product," but I think these concepts are likely over-rated.** Note that for a 2.2-ish gallon batch, I used eight ounces of crystal malts, which brings up two points:

1. the suggestion that amber/dark extracts have crystal malt in them, and that this is somehow different from light extracts, and is therefore a large factor to consider in production of beers that include non-light extracts, seems to have been a non-concern. This beer doesn't taste like it's got way too much crystal malt in it, it just drinks like beer. I don't see the problem, and now I've actually tried it myself, so no regurgitation of "standard advice" shall be spewforthingly offered from my ever gaping pie-hole on this topic. However, the idea of crystal malts in a saison could bring about even greater "controversy," which leads us to point two...

2. This beer ain't "dry." It's not even a New Yorker's sense of humor dry. It's not even Arizona on a rainy day dry. It's not even the 17th lecture of biology 3233, Principles of Evolution dry. It's just not dry. It tastes like the yeast wanted it to be dry, but who puts crystal malt in a saison? It's quite interesting, and I must say that when it comes to crystal malts and T-58 saison yeast... I'd do it again.

I like the hoppiness of this beer. It's got a good amount of hops, enough to balance out the malt bill (including the crystal malt), but doesn't overpower, and doesn't take away from the yeast characteristics you'd expect in a saison. It's got a good hops bite, but it ain't no IPA. I think for this style of funky beer, that low AA hops like the ones I used here offer a good "force multiplier" for your probability of making tasty beer.

So my conclusion is that since I already bought a 2 pound package of the SUPER-dreaded EXTRA DARK extract, that I'm going to try some sort of ultra-mega-funky dark beer with T-58. I bet it will be good, even if a tad on the funky side. But what good is a saison yeast if it doesn't make funky beer?

*my five gallon batches are done at my bro's house and are fermented inside freezers with Johnson controllers. My house does not have brewing stuff, except for my Mr Beer keg, and my room is upstairs, so the temperatures can fluctuate quite a bit in the summer, to include "warmer than optimal" for most yeasts (which is why I use freezers/controllers for my primary production of homebrew; it's just too warm in texas to NOT have a temperature controlled fermentation chamber).

**also note that I've mentioned before how when n=1, S=0, and we're up to n=1 on this batch