Quick tasting notes: Playoffs IPA 2.0, Export Stout 2.0 & Camp de Brains Saison

After another lull there's now heaps of stuff happening in my brewing world and I've got a bit of a backlog of posts to catch up on. First, the trip to Bruny Island. It was awesome as always. Relaxing, fun times catching up with mates and plenty of food and drink. The beers went down well and it was nice to be able to execute my plan and take 3 decent if not perfect beers to share.

Quick tasting notes:

The Playoffs IPA 2.0 was a bit disappointing. Not bitter enough and much darker than it should have been thanks to a shortage of light crystal malt at my local home brew shop. I also way overdid the flavour hops and they completely obscured the rye and other malt flavours. It wasn't awful to drink but it was a long way from what I wanted.

The Road Trip Export Stout was another re-brew. This time the changes I made really benefitted the beer. It was much more dry than the first one but still had heaps of body thanks to the flaked rye I used. Big and bold.

Camp de Brains Saison probably the crowd favourite. It turned out really nicely I think. It had a pleasant, soft malt flavour from the pils, wheat and rye malts to go with a smooth bitterness. A sweet malt aroma merged with something like strawberry and a little hop aroma. I'd like to try it again fermented at a higher temperature to give it a little more yeast character.

The beer was nice, the view didn't hurt either

First infection

This happened about a month ago but I thought I'd chuck the photo up. Just as well it was only in a starter. Also just as well that I was lazy enough to leave the starter long enough to show signs of infection. It smelled really wrong.

Sad times

I suspect the cause was that I wasn't careful enough about sanitising the stir bar. Next time I will nuke it. There's nothing like an infection to spark a bit of sanitising paranoia.