Lucky 13 Grand Cru

After many months of bread making followed by many months of frozen dinners, I have found an old calling in the world of food. Way back in 1993, in those crazy days of university, a neighbour and I hooked up to do a multitude of projects, ranging from painting and furniture refinishing to... beer making. Over that school year we always had a batch brewing (I continued brewing occasionally over the next several years, but never with such frequency), my favourite being a grand cru with honey, coriander and orange peel that we made roughly following Papazian.

Well, the time has come again. I discovered that Fermentations had moved close enough to our home, making it feasible to transport beer from their facilities. (Our current place has snazzy floors that I'd hate to spill wort or beer onto in any large quantity.)

Lucky 13 Grand Cru was conceived on the weekend of our 13th anniversary. It was made with some new fangled pasteurized wort-in-a-box, rather than with malt or malt extract (a bit disappointing, as I love cooking up wort). We did not reserve a liquid yeast in advance (it has to be proofed for several hours), so we used a fancy new cake yeast. We also forgot to bring Papazian, so we guessed the recipe, using brown sugar instead of honey b/c they were out of honey.

The result isn't bad, although it has an almost perceptible tinny quality to it that I think is caused by the yeast. Our friends raved, and we're still drinking it - and planning how we will modify the recipe for our next batch.

Here are the changes we are planning for our next batch:

• increase the amount of coriander
• decrease the amount of orange peel so that the coriander to orange peel ratio is 3 to 1
• use liquid yeast
• add 2 lbs. of dark honey (instead of 1 lb. of brown sugar)
• collect more crown cap bottles

Pictures to come.