So remember nearly a month ago when I alluded to some Adventure happening in the hiz-ouse?  Well, after steeping, boiling, mixing, having a problem with some of my equipment, nearly having a few heart attacks and fermenting for four weeks in my ninja fermenter (seen above), it is finally BOTTLING DAY! This involved moving the beer to another bucket to avoid all the dead yeasts and gunk from the primary fermenter and then moving it to bottles and capping!  Now it will wait in a dark, sealed off area for ten days and then…ONLY THEN…will it be ready to consume.

So as I said, it was a recipe for a clone of Arrogant Bastard, but due to changes in most of the ingredients, I’ve named it AUDACIOUS BITCH in acknowledgement of its roots.

There were one or two bottles that wouldn’t fit a lid so I chilled one of them and gave it a taste. Other than being flat (which will get fixed as the priming sugars and remaining yeasts do their thang in bottle), this beer certainly lives up to it’s name of AUDACIOUS BITCH. This is a beer that really does have some attitude behind it. It’s definitely a Very Bitter Beer to the point where it may be a split group of people who will dig it and who won’t. I can’t picture having more than 2 or 3, but I guess that’s part of it. Should also be noted that after the few samples I had, I’m already feeling a bit dizzy. So…THERE’S THAT.

But I’ve written down some changes that I’ll be making for the next batch of this kind as well as outlined some of my errors. It’s far from perfect, but I can see the good parts in this that I want to keep.

And of course, I’ll be right back at brewing. I’m going to take the advice of Dogfish Head Brewery’s Sam Calagione and brew using a kit and in the boil process throw in some wild ingredients. This saves a lot of money (ingredients for AB cost me about $80) and gets you thinking outside the box by just going crazy with those ingredients.

Regardless, I’m having a ball with this stuff.

NOTE: I’m going to go further in to some of the basics of homebrewing with you folks later.  This is just recording a personal moment for me. 🙂