Evanta Malbec aging

stoutmaker1 Comment

We do some wine tasting too!

Last year in April (2020) we did a short run of reviewing some Aldi wines. For those who don’t know, Aldis has a pretty respectable selection of wines at Aldi’s prices.

I kept a few notes on a few tastings because we were planning on possibly doing some recordings or video shoots with them.

One of the first wines we had was a 2018 Argentinian Malbec from Evanta. This one had a year of aging on it already. (2018 grapes, released in 2019) We thought this was a very good wine, and at the $5.00 point.. Great choice we thought. At this point I just have some small notes written for the 2018..

Good body. Smells like black cherry. Plums. Is that strawberry?
Not much there, but we did like this one.  

We also found that the 2019 version was also just released, so we picked that up as well. This version was fresh. 2019 grapes and released in early 2020. It was good, but very “new” tasting. So we decided to go back and get another bottle to keep for a year and see what happens when you give a $5 bottle of new wine some time to develop.

Here is the notes that I took drinking fresh 2019 Evanta Malbec from Aldis..

First aromas are very one-sided. Concord grape, with a bit of alcohol.  Thats it.
 I expected to have far more taste. the aromas were just one note,, the tastes were also somewhat weak.
Anyone who has made their own wine will recognize the taste here. New..very new wine. It even has that particulate feel of a new wine.

Very tannic and oakey with the thinner body makes it feel a bit harsh,, but not offensive.
While on the dry side, I would not consider this a dry wine at all. It stops short of that, but the tannin makes it feel dryer

Everything about this wine is one dimentional.. But because it feels so new, I suspect that will change over the next year or so.

The warmer i let my glass get the more that subtle tastes start to emerge,, but only slightly.
I smell a bit of green banana now,, but tastes of plums a bit. But they never get more than just hints.

I think i’ll have to go get a second bottle of this and set it aside till next year. Its a decent wine now but after that oak fades and it get a bit of age to mellow things,, this may be a really good Malbec, like the 2018 was

So sounds like it was a decent wine,, just too new. Well I’m getting ready to open the bottle this week that I have been saving since last April. I will find the same glass, and I’ll even head out to the garage studio for the same ambiance. 

There is time to hit up Aldi’s for a bottle of the 2019 Evanta Malbec in a blue bottle if they still have it. Then you can taste along with me in a few days.

Rebrew: Red IPA- part 1

stoutmakerLeave a comment

So the timing of this next rebrew is pretty much right on. The club is having a little “contest” to get back into the swing of things again, now that we are more and more back to in-person meets.

For the June meeting (about 6 weeks away) we are supposed to bring in an IPA to be judged “peoples choice” style by the whole club. Like we do at our picnic contest.
Any style of IPA goes. Just bring enough for the club members to sample and vote on. This isnt BJCP style where the technical aspects are what you’re after. This is straight up personal preference where terrific beers often get lost in the shuffle of odd editions and out of styles.

Plus this is not my favorite, or best style, but I have made some decent ones over the years. One that I did like, was my Duck Creek IPA from 2018.

I did keep detailed notes on this brew, so it will be a very easy rebrew with possibly only a change or two. But before I get too far, here is the original recipe
-Red IPA- Duck Creek IPA
11 lbs 2 row
1.5 lbs 60L
.5 lbs double crystal (120L)
1 oz Eureka @ 60
2 oz cascade @ 20
2 oz cascade @ FO
Mash at 154
Notty yeast.

I mention in the original post that this was more or less an upscaled version of my American Amber ale. Which yea, sounds like the way to go. But I also remember that I was trying to get a certain taste from those Eureka hops.

A local brewco had just released a one hop style beer with these Eureka hops and the taste and smell was like a newly cedar sided basement. Even I just used the Eureka as bittering only, I had a bit of that cedar board in there. I kinda want more of that.

But its this Simpsons Double crystal that I’m more concerned with. I am not sure that I have any left, or if I can get any in time. This malt was much different than any other crystal malt I haved used.

The color is around 120L but it does not taste like any other 120L crystal. It tastes like a mix of Chocolate Malt, 80L and a smidge of Special B all rolled into one.
I am not going to try and come up with a mix like that,,, at least not in this batch. So I hope I have another bag of it at home yet, but if not, I will just use a much smaller portion of 120 crystal.

Next I was thinking I should dry hop. I probably wouldnt normally do that,, but if this meant for a contest of IPAs, then it better be dry hopped. But what to use?
I’m remembering back to that cedar sided basement beer. Basement being the key word here. We need some dankness with this. How about Columbus… yea. The Eureka should take care of the cedar siding, the Columbus will take the basement part.

Ok I think we are set. I will be brewing this beer Saturday,, hopefully I can get some of that Double Crystal.

Rebrew Series #1 Scottish 60 part 3

stoutmakerLeave a comment

So this is part 3 of the Scottish 60 rebrew and we are ready to be tasting. You can check out parts one and two right there on the links.
I kegged this about two weeks ago and I’m just doing the set and forget carb method, so no shaking or over pressurizing.

What I was trying to do was go back to these beers that I brewed when first starting out. Where they as good as I remember? And can I improve them a bit using what I have learned since then. And as far as I can gather, its been 20 years since last brewing this one.

I was trying to get a caramel backbone both then and now. Then I tried using a boil down of first runnings to try and caramelize the sugars, which was pretty much out of character for the historic brewing. So this go round I used the more traditional style of grain bill to get where I wanted. Crystal 60 and 80 were the focus here.

I did almost nothing out of the ordinary with this brew just a regular day on the Mash and Boil.

So how did it turn out?

Poured me a pint of this dark copper beer. Nice light tan head, that probably would have stayed a bit longer, but I just grabbed a glass from the cupboard. A beer clean glass would have helped. But the lacing was still pretty good.

Oh lord the caramel. Not overpowering, but definitely the main event here. Just the bit of what I would call chocolate or something close to that. And that US04 yeast is there but took a bit of warming to get.

The caramel follows into the taste as well. And,, as I was trying to get, a bit of Diacetyl. This is why I fermented at a lower than normal temp with the US04, to see if I could get some of that buttery in here. And it worked. Not strong, but it don’t need to be strong to be noticeable. Now maybe that chocolate note I was smelling was the diacetyl or butterscotch maybe.

No hop taste but the yeast esters are building the warmer it gets. Bitterness is very low, but countering the sweetness.

I gotta say that I really like this beer. And would also say while I remember really liking the first run, this is probably closer to what I was intending to brew back then. Its got all of those tastes I wanted, a bit dryer and probably much more to style.. Other than its slightly bigger than what a Scottish Light would be. This would most likely be in the Heavy range as we are close to a 5% beer.

I’m going to say that the improvements in this rebrew are a success and that this is a pretty good beer, I’m sure it wont stick around long.

That was fun going back and trying to rebrew some of the first beers. But stay tuned. I have another rebrew coming up this week. A newer brew than this one, but it fits in with one of our club activities.