Pleasantly Palatable Pumpkin Spice Porter

I’m here to brag about my beer; more specifically, my pumpkin spiced porter.  My previous batch, a summer ale, fell flat (ha) so I’m excited that not only did I find this brew especially tasty, but so did everyone who tried it.  Consequently, out of the two+ cases I bottled, I only got to drink about five or six with only two remaining after the holidays.

With this batch, I stayed away from the secondary, opting to keep the wort in the primary for three weeks before bottling.  I opened a bottle about a week in as a tester and found it a bit over carbonated.  I decided some extra time conditioning should help relax the beer and it did; it really brought down the carbonation to a suitable level after about a month of time sitting in the closet.

The beer’s characteristics are hard to describe; it’s a porter but somehow it turned out very light and refreshing, which I will credit to the carbonation.  It pours a big, frothy head but lacks creaminess.  Slight bitter notes upfront give way to a prominent ginger and a spicy cinnamon flavor at the finish without being sweet.  I would definitely call this a sessionable beer as odd as it may seem being a traditionally heavy style.  I believe that for someone who doesn’t like dark beer (i.e. everyone in my family), this brew is a good way to appreciate dark styles without going too heavy.

So what’s next? In mid-November I brewed an IPA, put on my big girl pants and tried out a secondary again.  I also ventured into other home brewing firsts and will cover the results once I drink them.

Other good stuff? For Christmas, I was given some neat beer gifts; I received a wort chiller (excited to give it a try in the near future), a plethora of different beer glasses, and my sister signed me up for a three-month subscription to the Craft Beer Club.  All very cool and all very likely to keep my refrigerator (and blood stream) full of beer.