Wedding Beer

Last night we sampled the second version of pumpkin porter for the first time. It's only been in bottles for two weeks. It was, well, good. It's never good after only two weeks. The beer always needs more time to age a little and mellow out. After only two weeks it's usually still way too bitter and the complexity of the flavors don't shine through clearly enough. In short, after only two weeks the beer is usually not quite drinkable yet.

But this pumpkin porter was drinkable. Bitter without being overwhelming. Relatively clean after-taste. Not exactly sweet, and much smoother than I expected. There was a little bit of depth to the flavor but the spice and pumpkin notes were really subdued. So much so that you wouldn't know it was a pumpkin just from tasting it. And it should only get better as it ages.

I wish I had time to play around with it a little more, but I don't. I'm going to spend May brewing the beer for the wedding so that it has a few months to even out and reach its peak. Maybe I'll add more spices to the next batches, but I'll keep the amount of pumpkin the same. I'll taste the first version of pumpkin porter again to be sure, but I'm pretty sure this second version is the keeper. I based it off of Papazian's recipe for Goat Scrotum Porter, but I'm going to call mine Black Bird Pumpkin Porter instead. Seems a little more autumnal and wedding-appropriate (although I'm sure some may argue that scrotums of any variety are wedding-appropriate).

Oh, also, I got a new chair: