Coastal Brew Day Blog

BOURBON MOLASSES PORTER   This isn't the first porter to be featured in this pages. In fact it's the third. Our standard Porter and our Holiday Ale each have entries that you can take a look at for more information on Porters. What makes this version of our Porter different is the addition of both molasses and bourbon.  The first thing that makes this beer different than the other Porters that we have made is the bourbon. Now, we've aged our Belgian Stout with bourbon soaked oak chips, but this is the only beer that we make that has bourbon as a direct ingredient. When we designed this beer, we wanted the bourbon flavor to be an accent on the overall profile of the beer, not dominate it or add any further alcohol content. To do this we came up with a new solution. Instead of simply pouring a bottle of bourbon into our beer at any point, we decided to make it an addition to the secondary fermentation. Before doing this addition, we had to find a way to eliminate any alcohol ...

Sad Christmas Porter   Generally speaking, holiday ales all have certain similar characteristics. Spiced, hearty, and aromatic, these beers are often called Winter Warmers. Winter Warmers or Holiday Ales generally aren't considered a traditional beer style, however their roots go back centuries. Many Winter offerings can trace their lineage back to the English or Belgian Strong Ales and Wassail of bygone eras.  Wassail is both a drink and a celebration. Warm cider or mead is flavored with a combination of citrus peels, apples, and mulling spices to create what we today would call a mulled cider. Wassailing traditions are a Norse creation, and Vikings brought the Winter events to what is now England during their era of conquer. Many times the brew was communal with people drinking out of special Wassail bowls together in the town taverns. In England, the Yarlington Wassail has been held since the 17th century, and it is quite the event. According to Wikipedia: " The   Yarl...

Porter Porters are a traditional ale originally from England, starting their story way back in the 1700’s. Both the Northern English   and those in and around London developed their own individual characteristics, however the London style became more popular and eventually became the dominant version of the style nearly eliminating Northern Porters entirely. Porters were made for dock workers who wanted something stronger, bolder, and more alcoholic than the traditional pub ales that they were getting from their local taverns. Brewers used heavily kilned and roasted malts to give rich dark colors and roasted flavors to a beer powerful enough to appease 18 th century longshoremen. They enjoyed a quick rise to popularity during the rise of the Age of Enlightenment, with George Washington being a famous fan of porters, even frequenting an ale house in New York City that made a particularly good one. They became so popular in the UK that a kind of arms race evolved to see ...