After some discussion, we decided to go ahead and enter the Angry Kitty Ale into the Sam Adam’s Longshot Competition. The Angry Kitty Ale has some flaws but even with the flaws, the feedback would be nice to get. So off it went.
We finally got around to bottle the Angry Kitty Amble Ale and had ourselves a taste.
It’s good.
It’s damn good.
The hops comes out clearly in both the smell and the taste. The flavor is rich with malt, caramel, rye, and a nice hint of chocolate at the end. The balance is spot on. I can’t wait to see how this one is when it conditions.
For the next batch, I will probably use more hops, possibly in the middle or end of the process.
As an extra treat, I have included a video of how the priming sugar is added for bottling. It is pretty neat to watch.
The video was captured using my cell phone at very low res.
A few days late but we racked the angry kitty amber ale into the secondary Carboy. We snagged a quick taste before we put in the airlock.The nose is very sweet, not too malty, just very sugary and sweet. The taste was a pleasant surprise. We were expecting a very sweet tasting beer but instead the first flavor we got was hops.The bitterness seemed right on the money, as well as the hop selection. Besides the hops, the sweetness from the specialty grains came out very well. So far, it seems the beer is pretty well balanced.
The beer still is a little cloudy but the secondary should help with that along with a clearing agent at bottling. This time we are using Polyclar which is typically used in wine production (it clears out tannins in addition to clearing out the other junk). Originally, we were going to use Irish moss as a clarifier but some sources state that it isn’t ideal for extract brew making (it removes too many proteins). The package says to add it right before bottling but most beer brewing sources recommending adding it at least a day before (so it can settle out).
So far so good for the first version of Angry Kitty Amber Ale. Next one should be even better.