El Presidenté

 Yesterday was the day! I finally got around to making the White House Honey Ale that I got from Northern Brewer. It smelled amazing and is popping away despite the fact that I used dry yeast, which was something I didn't want to do, but decided if I was going to do it like the White House said, I would stick to their recipe.  If things go one way next month, we may see more White House recipes; if things go the other way we may never see White House beer again! This was, however, one of the easiest beers I have made in a long while!  For starters, the kit was all made up, the grain came pre-crushed, there was an instructions list, and hop schedule.  All I had to do was follow instructions! My setup was even a little overkill for the beer...


The process was just like the partial mash brews I used to do on the stovetop, so I filled up my keggle, brought the water to 152F, plopped in the grain sack, and mashed. Plucked it out after a small mashout of up to 170F, brought to a boil, added the Golden Liquid Malt Extract and the Breiss DME. Brought to a boil again for 15 minutes and added 1.5oz of UK Kent Golding, boiled 30 more minutes, added 1.5oz of UK Fuggle, boiled for 10, added the honey and kept a boil for 5 minutes, then killed the heat. A quick siphon through the counterflow and then pitch the (rehydrated) yeast with a touch of yeast nutrients, and voila! Not much more to it than that. And without all the grain I was left with very little cloudiness in the wort. I really have to start taking pictures of the process steps, because I have noticed that I have a lot of photos of the same stuff on here.

Northern Brewer really did charge me a little much for having the kit pre-made  but this one was for nostalgias sake. It will go to secondary and bottle before (hopefully) I head to Vegas so I can pop one open right when I come back to pore over the election results. Also, Not going to work too hard on the label, but might steal some good ones from the internet...                                          thinking of this one:





                                              Or this one, as it came:




             Thoughts?



Lastly, I bottled the Dead Ringer IPA as well, so that will be ready to open right before I leave town for a week! Tasting notes on both to come. Next week: Bière du Père Fouettard! A Holiday beer for all to fear...