Orangutan #1

Before buying our brewing kit, we went up to San Francisco to watch our friend Peter start a new brew. This gave us a fantastic opportunity to learn the process and ask questions. But even more important, it gave us the opportunity to sample some of his previous brews! The most amazing of these was simply known as Orangutan.

The story goes that Peter went into his local brew shop, Brewcraft, one day and asked ol' Griz to give him a new recipe to try. So Griz made up a recipe on the spot and named it "Orangutan". (Actually, it's written "orangutang" on the recipe sheet but I just assumed that was a misspelling.)

Well, what can I say about Orangutan? It. Is. ...wait for it... Legendary! This brew is simply incredible. It is a malty brown ale with hints of orange. It is classified as a "Christmas Ale" which is just a category of spiced dark ales that are often brewed in preparation for ...you guessed it, Christmas!

Compared to the other brown ale that we brewed, the Orangutan has a large amount of flavoring grains. In fact, we needed two steeping bags for the grains comprised of Munich malt, special roast malt, and carafa. To that we add 6 pounds of liquid malt extract and a half pound of lactose. During the brew, we add 2 ounces of Liberty hops.

The thing that makes this brew special is the orange. Once the wort has been moved to the fermenter you marinate an entire orange peel and heaping tablespoon of corrianer seed in 2 cups of vodka. After the two week fermentation period this "potion" is added to the brew before bottling and imparts a wonderful orange flavor to the final beer.

The only hard part of this brew is waiting to drink it because the longer the Orangutan sits in the bottle, the better it gets! Peter recommends that we wait a full 2 months before drinking. That is real torture!

P.S. For the geeks, our initial gravity measurement was 1.055 even though we were expecting a value of 1.062. Alas, we forgot to measure the pitching temperature.

Brewcraft of San Francisco
1555 Clement St
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 751-9338