Mystery Box 2021 – Belgian Pale Ale
My entry into the Mystery Box competition for the Ottawa home brewers. It’s meant to be a classic Belgian Pale Ale. It’s not a style liked by everyone, though. It didn’t do that well in the competition.

Roggenbock
A play on the weixenbock style but with rye malt instead of wheat malt. Should be interesting!

Mullberry Street
A saison style beer with additions of dried mullberries, cassia buds and Timut peppercorns. I’m not sure there are enough mullberries to make a significant difference.

SMaSH Heidelberg/Cascade
A SMaSH featuring the Cascade hops harvested this year. I like the Heidelberge malt taste. These should make a good combination.

Christmas Stout
Just a stout to have at Christmas. No Christmas themed adjuncts added to this one. Meant to be very dark and rich. I’ve used Oak Smoked Wheat malt to give a bit of body in place of oats. This malt is fairly old and doesn’t have a lot of smokey flavour left. What little smoke it brings will be lost in the rest of roasted flavours.

Cranberry Crumble
A beer intended for the Christmas season. The recipe has lots of toasted barley flakes and a bit of oats. I’m hoping for a nice toasted grain to complement the cranberry and orange. I toyed with the idea of adding cassia buds for a bit of cinnamon to complement the flavours. This version is just straight cranberry and orange zest.

Smoked Porter – 2021
Haven’t brewed a smoked beer in a while. The smoked wheat malt in this recipe is a few years old now. It may not be as strong and fresh malt.

Pumpkin Ale
This year’s edition of a pumpkin ale. I use 5oog of pumpkin in the mash and 500g in the secondary along with some pumpkin spice.

Maker’s Ale
A pale ale using some home grown Cascade and Chinook hops. This also features malt from Maker’s Malt in Saskatchewan. The wort smelled amazing. Gonna be a good one.

Manitoulin Wild Ale
A beer brewed and boiled for 15 minutes and left out over night to be inoculated by the natural yeast and bacteria floating in the wind. Last year’s edition is still waiting to mature into something drinkable.

Bay Brew – 2021
Another rendition of a gruit brewed with herbs available on the Manitoulin Island. The juniper is always suprisingly dominant.

Scavenger – 2021
An IPA made with all home grown hops – Cascade and Chinook. For this recipe I went back to one of my favourite malt bills for IPAs – 2/3 Pale Malt, 1/3 Dark Munich with a bit of flaked wheat for head retention.

Puddle Water
An attempt at a dry stout. It’s designed to be on the lighter end of the stout colour scale. After all, puddle water isn’t completely black. Is it? The Irish Stout seemed to be the closest category to fit this under. I missed the target gravity by quite a bit. I’m not sure what went wrong there. Although, I was using my old mash tun as I was brewing the Scavenger at the same time.

SMaSH – Home Grown Mt. Hood/Gambrinus ESB
A SMaSH using some Mt. Hood hops grown in my yard last year. Combined with an excellent malt from Gambrinus.

SMaSH – Home Grown Cascade/Gambrinus ESB
A SMaSH using some Cascade hops grown in my yard last year. The Gambrunus ESB malt is a great malt. Very tasty. This time I corrected the mash schedule and got a better yield.

SMaSH – Home Grown Chinook/Gambrinus ESB
A SMaSH using some Chinook hops grown in my yard last summer. The Gambrunus ESB malt is a great malt. Very tasty. Unfortunately, I my yield was 16 only litres from this brew session. I needed to adjust the recipe for brewing outside on a propane burner. There was way more evaporation than on the kitchen stove.

Rhubarb Wheat 2021
An easy drinking summer beer using up some of last year’s rhubarb. Fermented with WLP520 – Sigmund Kveik and WLP603 – Torulaspora delbrueckii

Tonight’s the Night – Amber Lager
Using up bits of malt lying around to make an amber lager. A very tasty result.

Black Arse – Black IPA
I thought I would brew a black IPA and use up some of my old hops. This style seems to be making a bit of a resurgence. My IPAs don’t usually turn out well.

Raspberry Stout
Using some frozen raspberries from last summer. This also has a healthy amount of chocolate added. I guess that makes it more of a Choclate Raspberry Stout. Tasting Notes: It’s a bit to dry. Needs some sweetness to help combine the raspberry and chocolate notes.

Clap for the Wolfman
Some kind of pale lager thing. This is made with Heidelberg Pilsner malt by Best Malz and some flakes corn and rye. I’m interested to see what the rye gives me. I’m also using 2020 Mt. Hood hops from my back yard. The yeast will be Wyeast 2001-PC Pilsner Urqeull H-Strain. Should be yummy

Czech Mate
One of my rare attempts at ta lager. My fermentation space is cool enough to make it possible

Flanders Red Ale – 2021
I started a Flanders Red Ale program last year. This is the second brew of this style.

Heather is My Name – 2021
Happy New Year! Getting the brewing year started with another attempt at a heather ale. This turned out quite good. A nice hint of heather on the flavour and aroma backed up with a bit of sweetness from the honey malt. I might even go a bit heavier on the heather next time.