Yesterday Jim and I brewed our fourth 'official' pilot brew in my basement, a batch of smooth drinking English Mild Ale we are calling Workingman. For those unfamiliar with this style, it is a low alcohol brown ale that lands on the sweet side and has a nice toffee flavor from specialty caramel malts. Bitterness is pretty low too, and although we both love 3F's Pride and Joy, we're not planning to wallop this one with dry hops. 'Session beer' is the in vogue term for beers like this, meaning you could have a few and not lose your tact. Or you could have one for lunch and be back on task an hour later like everybody used to do in the olden days. Not a bad choice for talking race relations at the White House either, since you'd want to stay clear of much bitterness.
Test batches 1 & 2 Iron Fist Pale Ale & Cross of Gold will be poured at the Break the Gridlock party at Todd's house tomorrow. Both came out nice, and the Gold was especially enjoyable with plenty of body from Munich malt. We brewed Cross of Gold again a few weeks ago and tweaked the mash schedule keeping everything else the same to see if we could make it a little drier, but I find that one a little too thin. We'll do it again and get those temperatures somewhere in between to reach that happy medium. I'm enjoying a pint of pale tonight, which came out a bit stronger than we wanted, walking the ladder from pale to india pale. This is our standy, everyday pale so you gotta leave room to work up to in that department. We were targeting 40 IBUs, but Jim says "tastes kind like 50 to me". We dont have (and won't have) a spectrophotomer or a Beer Analyzer to double check his palate, but I think he's right. Still, it is a tasty brew.
