The Light and The Dark

(Editor's note: This post originally appeared on http://sites.google.com/site/billsbrewing/ on June 17, 2010)

The move to LA is coming up soon, and so the number of available brewing days is few. So few, in fact, that today I brewed for the last time ever...
in Swarthmore.

I had some grains leftover from previous recipes, and I thought it best to just use them up. But not just use them up. There surely was something good to be done with these grains, and I may have found it. What to do with the Belgian biscuit, extra dark crystal, black patent, chocolate, and roasted barley? There was an obvious divide here between light roast and dark roast barley, and so I had it: brew a light beer and a dark beer. I decided to use the same hops for each, Cascades for bittering and Willamette for aroma and flavor, and also the same yeast strain. There should be enough similarities and enough differences that these two beers will play nicely together when they are done.

Here is the light beer after brewing:





And here is the dark:

I was hoping for something much more pale with the light beer. Crystal is a light roast and adds a light color to the beer, but extra dark crystal, well, makes it a bit darker than your average pale ale. Maybe this is a copper or amber, and not a light.

And that dark beer? That is in stout territory.

They aren't exactly where I wanted them to be, but I have confidence that they will still be good brews. Who knows? They may even make nice black and tans. If you're into that sort of thing.