We be jammin'

A few years ago, Meg and I were in Portland eating dinner at the Deschutes Brewpub and we had a fantastic sour ale. After inquiring about the name, we were told that it was called St. Ryan's, which Meg loved because that was her maiden name (That's right, I married Meg Ryan). The beer was a one-off of their regular sour brown ale the dissident. This one off creation had marion berries (insert DC mayor joke here) added during secondary fermentation and it was good. Fast forward a couple of years, I'm sitting on 5 gallons of lambic that I brewed approximately 1 year ago, so its just starting to get to the lambic drinkable stage. What do I do to this finely aged, if not soured, beer? Well that glass of St. Ryan's is still swimming around up there in my head, and so I thought I'd try to add marion berries to this lambic. Well guess what? It's really hard to find marion berries outside of Oregon.




So I was forced to settle on 4 jars of marion berry jam. I added this jam yesterday to the fermenter and we shall see how she turns out in the next couple of months.

Holz

Old Vine Barleywine

The cold and nasty weather here in DC as of late has made me yearn for a blood warming barleywine. Fortunately, this past Christmas I brewed a big English style barley wine, Old Vine Barleywine. During secondary I added merlot juice and aged this brew on french oak for approximately 4 months. Well, I'm glad I did because it is the perfect companion for a cold rainy sunday afternoon/evening.