Burn baby!

Remember Brew#4?

Oh. That's right, I never made much notion of it because of other pressing issues (sampling beers and stocking up on quality brews, to name but two).

Well, here goes then.

Brew#4 is a leap into the unknown. Two weeks prior to B-day, I had just sampled a bottle of this baby:

"For people with guts"
Kinda hard to drink beer if you have none.

"The Daughter of the Ear Of Corn" is a small but rising (sort of) Belgian brewery, located in the region of Baarle-Hertog.

Yes, that's a piece of Belgium, smack in the middle of the Netherlands.  

Bravoure, then, is a smoke beer, but so delicately smoked that I'd hesitate to call it one, lest it gave people the wrong idea. I was so impressed by it, that I got me some smoked malt and distilled a recipe. I'd found a clone recipe for Antwerp's pride:

Het Bolleke

I tweaked the recipe to accomodate the smoked malt and achieve a higher ABV and substituted the hops, ending up with something which, during wort extraction, was tasting quite spot on.

I'd also infused some vanilla beans in Caol Ila whisky, to pimp a small batch of this brew which I'd set aside.

Turns out it all went nicely, and several weeks later, the brew is happily undergoing bottle conditioning in the hot room. I'm quite curious as to how drinkable this in going to turn out, but I've high hopes for it.

Seeing as how drinkable the wort was.

 

Now for a name...
 

Naming a brew is always a spurious affair. In this case, I couldn't quite find a name for this one, and all the obvious references to smoke turned out to be trite or misleading. A chat with the affable Marloes gave rise to musings on days long gone, when the East India Companies sailed for the orient, bringing spices and the occasional burning shipwreck. Add a bit of geekiness to all that and you end up with a brew which becomes somewhat unpronouncable, like zn+1=(|Re(zn)|+i|Im(zn)|)2+c, z0=0

Best enjoyed with a slice of Mandelbrot

I'll give it a week before I check carbonation, and another two weeks to mature, but I'm guessing it'll need at least a month or two to mellow out.

Quite stoked about this one, so watch this space for updates.

Also, witness the latest improvement to my homebrew equipment:

A fully automated grain mill!

 

Until then,

Greetz

Jo