There Is Nothing Like Brewing Beer Surrounded By Italian Vineyards!

Here I am, I've arrived in Tuscany and am already in a full homebrewing swing!! Here I am making a Simple Pilsner "Ale", With Pilsner grains, Green Bullet New Zealand hops, and an Ale yeast, as an experiment because ale yeast doesn't require refrigeration. So, we decided to call it "Pills N' Ale" as a play on words-description of this beer.  :-)

 We allowed this brew to ferment for 10 days, which brought the alcohol content up to 8%. Wow!! We then decided to experiment with dry hopping into secondary fermentation, using: cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, thyme and rosemary. We ground the herbs into a fine powder, and then added the spice/herb blend to the beer. Next, we added about a palm full of the New Zealand Green Bullet hops, and gave it a taster. What we found was that these additions gave it a scent, almost reminiscent of a winter ale! We found that this addition REALLY balanced the strong alcohol flavor that the beer previously had a strong taste of. So, we waited a few days, and then we bottle conditioned the "Pills N' Ale" with small additions of brown sugar and left it to bottle carbonate in a cool corner of our Tuscan stone house.

It has been long enough and has come time to drink our beer! First thing we noticed with this beer is that it carbonated beautifully!! It has a great foamy head, a nice spicey aroma, and a pleasant golden body. The taste is incredible, and is comparable to a winter ale, but it turns out to be just as tasty & refreshing of a beer for mid-summer drinking in Italy!! Ahhh, the many ironies of homebrewing beer in a famous Italian Wine region...no longer an unexpected endeavor since craft breweries in Italy are on the rise and new micro breweries are springing up in new places each year!

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