Westvleteren Blonde is one of the Emanuel brothers

Got a big night ahead! I left for Whole Foods with the Mavericks game in the toilet and I return with 1 minute left and the Mavericks have pulled it off! Hot damn! Time to celebrate their win and our 301st beer (since we didn't realize yesterday was 300) with a real treat from the one Trappist Brewery whose beers are hardest to find, Westvleteren - Westvleteren info (Lost Abbey Inferno post).

The Westie Blonde is actually the least sought after of this brewery's beers - although the other two are the highest rated beers in the world for their style Beer Advocate Westvleteren. It's kinda like the Emanuel brothers. Ari is the president of the second largest talent agency in the world and has a character based on him in Entourage; Rahm was the Chief of Staff for Obama and is now running for the mayor of Chicago; and Ezekial is the Director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a leading proponent to legalize euthanasia. They are all leading men in their fields, but let's be honest, the Westie Blonde is probably an Ezekial Emanuel.

This lady is one smooth talking blonde who gets a little sassy as the night wares on. There is a malty sweet smell and I'm really enjoying the creamy, buttery and herbal flavor profile, but the grainy bite at the end jolts me. It's a grainy or clove like bite and it shadows my every sip. This is very well rated on every beer site, but the finish really nags me, like an itchy bug bite or a woman (winks). I want to say it's a Transformers rating, but I know that it's a Westie and other might enjoy it more than I, it gets a THE ROCK rating. However I personally wouldn't buy it again - not that I plan on going to Bruge anytime soon.

Next on the books is the great Sea Salt and Caramel experiment of 2011. I'm forging new ground with my next homebrew and so I need to test it. It's a wild recipe with a lot of new ground to cover. I have to reduce part of the wort to aid caramelization and then actually caramelize the brown sugar while I boil the wort for an extended time (90mins) - at least that's the plan. We'll see how it actually goes down.

The recipe is in the final stages of development and is go for brew this Sunday. It's based on these chocolate caramels that have sea salt on top, which explodes the flavor in your mouth. Love it. Here's my recipe: Savory Caramel Sea Salt

I'm testing how much salt should be used in the boil. Too little and I make an overly caramel beer, too much and I ruin it for everyone. I bought a can of caramel and dumped it in a specific amount of water in order to provide some flavor consistency, and then I'm adding sea salt at specific increments and tasting.

1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon yield nothing. 1 teaspoon we're getting there. 2 teaspoons and we've ruined it. This is a 2 quart batch and in 5 gallons there's 20 quarts, so we're multiplying by 10 and thus I'm looking to add 10 teaspoons to the boil. I'd rather go under rather than over. Another reason to test the salt now rather than later is, if I miss the correct salt amount in the boil, I can't add it when I bottle because salt de-carbonates beer. You've probably seen people add salt to beer at bars, particularly to Corona in the summer. That's why. Adding salt at bottling will make my beer flat. #notwinning

Tonight I'm also making a yeast starter for the brew, which is the easiest and quickest part of the process. My math is a little fuzzy, but each container has roughly 50 billion cells of yeast in it, and a yeast starter can double that amount. It's important to the fermentation process that there is enough yeast to eat the sugar. I think it's important to make one with any beer over 4% and more importantly, your beer will ferment faster, sometimes as soon as 4 -6 hours after pitching it. Party