the third thursday of may was last week, which meant that I was headed to culver city for PG’s monthly meeting.

• the monthly style was IPAs, which drew a ton of kegs (12+) and commercial bottles as well as a great crowd (the raffle was especially entertaining).  after resting my blown-out palate, I pulled the cork from a bottle of my cider, which had just turned the corner after being sick with pedio for several months (a good thing!).  I was pleased with the results and held a more detailed (and lupulin-free) tasting last night.
• basque cider
• appearance – pale gold, great clarity, very slight carbonation
• aroma – earthy funk, sweet cooked apple, spice
• taste – clean, light funk up front with a lingering apple finish, mellow acidity
• notes – although not as funky as I would have hoped (aroma was stronger than actual taste), this is a great alternative to a standard cider and a good intro to the wild side for the uninitiated
• I also had a chance to try out a small beer I had made in the parti-gyle method while sparging vizcaino II.  I collected around six gallons of wort at around 6 brix and pitched a starter of WLP500 that I decided to leave out of my main batch.  after adding about 1/3 gal of leftover sour cherry juice from cabrillo II, the beer finished at 2.8 brix for an abv of around 2.6%.
• pinky (belgian small beer)
• appearance – golden apricot color, fine effervescence, fluffy white head
• aroma – light floral belgian yeast, clove spice, slight belgian phenols
• taste – light and crisp with a dry, slightly bitter finish, palate scrubbing carbonation
• notes – good budweiser sessionable alternative, lawnmower beer, could use during a tasting as a palate refresher
• I also managed to choke down a three-year-old, delightfully bretty bottle of temptation (004X1) and pitch the dregs into vizcaino II.  it had been a while since I had tried that beer and I was somewhat surprised to find very little lacto or pedio sourness in the flavor profile – just a very assertive brett character reminiscent of orval that provided a fluffy, long lasting head and great carbonation.  hopefully some of that brett character comes through in vizcaino!

Tags: basque cider, ipa, pacific gravity, small beer, temptation, vizcaino

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 at 6:01 pm and is filed under beers, events, ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.