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Last night I finished a book called “Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast’s Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home” by Sam Calagione.  Sam is the owner of the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.  They have a couple different restaurant/brewpubs around our area and I’ve tried many of their beers so I am quite sure the guy knows what he’s talking about.

Anyhow, “extreme brewing” is the idea of taking standard types of recipes for making beer and then twisting them in some direction that deviates from tradition.  In most cases it seems to be adding massive amounts of additional malts or sugars to increase the ABV or dryhopping your beer with insane amounts of hops but the book also suggests experimenting with non-traditional ingredients to add new flavors as well.  Anything from adding cinnamon to kiwis to lemongrass and well…you get the idea.  The more unusual and extreme the better!

I feel like even before I read the book I had an itch for this type of thing.  I’ve always been interested in high gravity beers ever since I tasted my first Belgian beer and even back when I was getting in trouble for sneaking beers from my parents basement during high school I never really did care for the taste of mainstream American beers like Coors, Miller, etc.

So now finally I get to start to experiment for myself.  The process is already underway in one of my recent brews.  I bought a Black Ale Kit from Austin Homebrew Supply and then added a whiskey soaked vanilla bean to it.  The whiskey helps pull out the vanilla flavor from the bean and also adds a smokey flavor of its own.  It’s aging in the secondary fermenter as I type this and should be ready to bottle in a week or so.  I also just ordered AHS’s American IPA kit, but purchased an extra ounce of Yakima Golding hops for dryhopping and am also going to try adding in an extra half pound of brown sugar to up the gravity a bit.  On the less extreme side of things I’ve also got a holiday spiced ale that’s almost ready.  Or maybe it was kind of extreme by default?  It’s got spices like orange peels and cinnamon in it.

I sense an awesome winter season of tasty home brews ahead…if only I had a fire place to hang out in front of or something.  Or maybe I can achieve that by sharing the beer with friends who have one?  Any takers?