Beer and Pre-beer

For this week's #BeerSaturday I present some beer, some food, and some soon to be beer that I am brewing.

We start off with a trip to my favorite brewery, Lolo Peak Brewing. I had the Winter Beast Dopplebock and my wife had her favorite, the Alpenglow Wheat Ale. The Dopplebock was strong but quite tasty, not very bitter, and mixed well with dinner.

I didn't get a picture of dinner, but I did get a picture of desert. This is their chocolate cake, It is very rich, quite chocolaty, and good.

Next I present the brew day for my toasted coconut brown ale, which took Best of Show this year at the local fair. Here sits the brew kettle just after the heat was killed to start the cooling process.

And here is the fermentation bucket all sealed with it's airlock ready to turn the wort into beer.

In addition to the toasted coconut which will be added after a week of fermentation, I am adding some chai spice this time. I hope it will add a bit of different flavor and doesn't turn out bad. I am steeping some chai tea bags in vodka to make a potent tincture so I don't have to add very much to get the flavor.

For my next purchased beer I present Cherry Coldsmoke from Kettlehouse Brewing. Their regular cold smoke is a strong scotch ale that I find very drinkable. This cherry version, not so much. It doesn't taste like cough syrup, which is good, but I didn't like the cherry taste very much. I like cherry, just not in this beer.

It's hard to see in this picture, but the foam has a faint red color to it.

Today, after some shopping, we went to a brewery we haven't been to for a while, Bayern Brewing. I had a flight of their Bad Santa Eisbock, years 2016, 2017, and 2018. The Eisbock is a version of a Dopplebock but is frozen at the end of fermentation allowing a portion of the water content to be removed. This results in a stronger tasting and higher alcohol content beer. I am glad I didn't have a full pint of this as it weighs in at 12-13% ABV. They were all tasty but I liked the 2017 and 2018 years better than the 2016 which was a bit more bitter. They are very flavorful and, since the alcohol is increased the way it is, it doesn't taste like it is as strong as it is.

Since this is a German style brewery with a German bistro attached, I had some curry wurst and spatzle to soak up the beer.