Late Seasonals Are Better Than No Seasonal

After much debate between brewing a wheat beer or a porter, on 9/24 I put a Pumpkin Porter in the fermenter. After fermenting for 3 weeks it will be going into secondary for a couple more days. This beer was made according to the recipe found at mrbeer.com

1x West Coast Pale Ale HME
1x Creamy Brown UME
1 Packet Dry Brewing Yeast
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
15oz Cooked Pumpkin Puree
2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg

Oatmeal Pale Ale Update

Sampled a bottle after 2/1/1(day).
Can't really say that the oatmeal added anything to the taste, but the aroma is nice. The hops need some time to tone down. No off flavors other than that though.

Oatmeal Pale Ale

1 can classic american blonde
1 can pale export UME
2 cups oatmeal
1/4 oz argentinian cascades

boiled 2 cups of oatmeal in a muslin sack with 4 cups of water for five minutes. Turned off heat and added the cans of malt extract, plus the hops in a second muslin sack. Will leave to ferment/carb/condition for 2/1/4 weeks.

octoberfest vienna lager

2x mr.beer octoberfest vienna lager
1x booster
1x liquid lager yeast

added the yeast from one can of vienna lager as yeast nutrient in the wort

The best part of making beer...

That's right, the best part of making beer is tasting the beer. Right now I'm sampling linebacker dopplebock and blue lightning. Both beers are by mr.beer, but that doesn't discredit them in any way. Since I'm working on two beers right now, lets start with the dopplebock.

The dopplebock came out a nice dark brown, just barely opaque. At first sip, I was a bit of overwhelmed by the bitterness, but as i continue it is starting to grow on me. Once past the bitterness the malt is more noticeable.

The blue lightning is a little too sweet. The sweetness however is not any fault of the recipe, but rather the honey used. Rather than use the standard fair of clover honey, I decided to use an organic wildflower honey, which also contributed to the beer being a bit darker than expected. While darker than expected, the beer is still a nice amber color. My only complaint is that the sweetness of the honey overwhelms any hint of blueberry taste.

In the next few days, I will hopefully have an update on my apple cider. I'm going to try and get that in the secondary fermenter tomorrow.

I realise this is not original

i know i'm not the first person to blog about beer, or even about making beer to be more specific. but what i do here is for my own benefit, and if it helps someone else out, so be it, glad i could help.
this blog is mainly so that i can track my own growth as a brewer. as you can see by the fact that i've only got a few mr. beer recipes under my belt, i've got a long way to grow (not that there's anything wrong with brewing with mr. beer, these guys do a great job). so as i go along my beer making process, i'll post the recipies i use, make comments on them once they're done, and give general updates as they go through the process. from time to time i'll give my thoughts on a commerical beer that i've sampled. so for those of you who for some reason make it here, sit back and enjoy the ride.