If you've followed along with my brewing adventures, you'll remember a couple of barrel aged beer recipes (Russian Imperial Stout and English Dark Mild). I also did a Barley Wine and a Rye Saison with Riesling grape concentrate in the same barrel (recipes lost forever to a computer crash). The saison had some brett in it, so the barrel's days of seeing clean beers were over. After I finished aging the Riesling Rye Saison, I kegged 5 gallons out of the 11 gallon barrel and then added in 5 gallons of the base beer used in my Nordic Wheat beer that was soured with my house sour culture. The barrel has now become a mini Solera project. Every 6 months or so I'll brew up 11 gallons of a basic 50/50 German Pale Malt/What Malt beer, 5.5 gallons will get soured and the other 5.5 gallons I can play with.

And that, my friends, is what brings you to this blog today...me playing with my wort. I was due to give a talk at my homebrew club (W.I.Z.A.R.D.S. in Worcester, MA) about sour beers back in April and wanted to have an example of both a fast and slow soured beer. I had a turbid mashed lamibic I brewed back in 2015 still kicking around that fit the bill for slow soured beer, so all I needed was a fast sour beer. And that's where this mid-February brew day came in.

I'm a big fan of Berliner Weisses, but had never tried making a no-boil one. I wanted to keep that raw, rustic, bready flavor from the pale and wheat malts, but I also didn't want this to continue to sour and watch the pH drop until it got too acidic to enjoy. So instead of a more traditional no-boil brews where you pitch lacto and yeast either together or slightly staggered on wort that was pasteurized, I decided to do an overnight kettle sour with pro-biotics, then raise the temp of the soured mash to 185F to kill all the bacteria and then pitch yeast into the cooled wort.

Berliner Weisse recipe for 5.5 gallons:

Grains:

• 4.5 lbs German Pale Malt
• 4.5 lbs Wheat Malt

Single infusion mash at 150F for 1 hour, then add boiling water to 170F and let that sit for 15 minutes before draining and batch sparging.

Fast souring:

• Once all the liquid was collected, heat up the wort to 185F and drain into a 5 gallon corny keg
• Add 5 ml of lactic acid to drop the initial pH to around 4.5 and cool wort to 115F
• Add 4 Ultimate Flora capsules (open capsules and dump in contents)
• Wrap the keg in a blanket and place in fermentation chamber set at 90F
• 12-18 hours later, test the pH until it was around 3.3
• Pour the soured wort into boil kettle
• Add 0.5oz of Hallertauer hops and immersion chiller
• Heat everything to 185F, cut heat and let sit for 10 minutes
• Chill and add everything to a carboy

Fermentation Plan:

• I used 2 packets of SafAle German Ale (K-97) yeast for this beer. It gives a bit of an ester character that plays with the sourness, giving an extra level of complexity. Fermented at 68F for 2 weeks before cold crashing and kegging.

Since this was originally an 11 gallon batch that I was spliting, I ended up taking roughly 5 gallons of pre-boiled wort, which luckily for me was at an OG of 1.036. After heating up my wort to 185F, I had to pause to fill up a corny keg. I added the lactic acid to help get the pH low enough to clear the "danger zone" for bad bugs to grow, and then put the keg in my basement to cool down to 115F. When I came back up to start the boil, I almost forget to add my hops for the sour base. Which, for me, is as close to a brewing disaster as I get.

The souring went a little faster than I anticipated, which was fine, I just wasn't expecting to get back on the brew horse at 830am on a Sunday morning, but luckily heating up to 185F, holding for 10 minutes to pasteurize, and then chilling went super fast. To make sure all the soured wort got into the carboy, I had to actually pour the last of the wort from the kettle into the carboy. But it was worth it as the finished beer is light, lemony, and bready. It's an easy drinker that you can slam back, but also complex enough that sipping and savoring is a viable option too. It's also the lightest beer I've ever brewed color-wise.

I really dug this beer a lot and am happy with the way it came out. I might try a different yeast than the K-97 next time. One of my wild yeasts I struck out to single colonies (I'll be writing about that project eventually) has a little rustic bite to it that I think would go well here. I just need to grow up a bigger starter and test out a full 1 gallon test batch with it to see what it's truly like in a light beer base.

Final numbers for my No Boil Berliner Weisse:

• Batch Size: 5 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.036
• Final Gravity: 1.012
• ABV: 3.15%
• IBU: 2

Not to toot my own horn (which I'm about to do anyways), but I've had a pretty strong run in some inter-club homebrew competitions recently. Out of the last 3 competitions, I won two and took 3rd in another. Sadly a computer crash wiped all traces of one of the recipes (rye saison finished with brett) and all the pics of a 2nd (Vienna Lager, slight recipe re-formulation will make it onto the blog later this year), but you can see the Kolsch that took 3rd.

What does all this have to do with a Belgian Dubbel? Well, it was May 2017's style for the competition and since I brewed it back in October, I figure I should probably get around to writing it up. There are a few roads to take you to Dubbel City. You can go grain only with no candi sugar using just base and specialty malts; base malt with candi sugar/syrup for color and flavor; or a combo of base and specialty malts with sugar. For this beer, I did something I've never done before, I brewed a clone recipe from a website. Or to be more precise, I copied the grain bill exactly but used different hops and a different yeast that I particularly love. So maybe I didn't really brew a clone recipe. The grain bill was based off the Westvleteren 8 clone from the wonderful Candi Syrup, Inc website.

Belgian Dubbel Clone, batch size 11 gallons: 

Grains

• 18 lbs Belgian Pilsner
• 5 lbs Belgian Pale Malt
• 3 pounds D-180 Candi Syrup
• 1.5 pounds Brun Fonce Cassonade Sugar

Mash at 149 for 60 minutes. Bring temp up to 162F by adding boiling water and let rest for 10 minute, then add more boiling water to get up to 170 and let sit for 15 minutes before draining and sparging. I also added 11g gypsum and 5.5g CaCl2 to the mash water and added lactic acid to get to a mash pH of 5.4.

Boil additions (90 minute boil):

• 0.4 oz Magnum @ 90 min (total of 10 IBUs)
• 2 oz Hallertauer Mittelfrueh @ 30 minutes
• 2 oz of Fuggles @ 10 minutes
• Added all sugar @ 10 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• White Labs Belgian Saison III (WLP585) for yeast. This yeast gives a very subtle hint of clove and phenol spice while kicking out great fruity esters (it was the main yeast I used in my winning rye saison recipe, along with WLP670 Farmhouse blend).
• I started fermentation at 65F and upped the temperature 2 degrees every day for 10 days until it hit 85F, where it was held for a week before gravity check, cold crashing, and kegging.

The brew day went well as always, crushed the grain, ended up a degree high on the 149F rest, a degree low on the 162F rest, spot on at 170F. The boil was a bit tricky, I over sparged a bit which meant I was dangerously close to boiling over for the first 30 minutes. Luckily disaster was avoided, though the extra sparging meant my efficiency was a touch higher than normal and when all was said and done, my OG was a higher than expected. I added the sugars near the end of the boil (with the 10 minute hop addition), chilled and filled up my carboys.

Once in carboys and cooled to 65F, I added the WLP585 yeast and every day increased the temperature by 2F until it hit 85F. I like to start Belgians a bit lower, so the first few days of fermentation don't get out of hand with phenol/ester production. By the time it gets up into the mid 70s, most of the fermentation is done, so the yeast character that develops doesn't have any fusel alcohols or bubblegum esters that you can get if the fermentation gets too hot those first few days. After cold crashing and kegging, I burst carbbed the beers overnight at 35PSI, and let them sit in my kegerator for 1 week at 12PSI. At this point I drew off a pint to clear any sediment from the kegs, and took one of them out of my kegerator to condition in my basement over the winter/spring (at ~65F). The other keg stayed in the kegerator during that time at ~40F. I did this to see if there was a detectable difference between the beers after a 5 month aging difference.

After I put both back on tap 5 months later, I noticed a some interesting differences. The beer that stayed in the kegerator has less alcohol warmth to it, even as it gets up to room temp, but the fruitiness is more subdued. Whereas the cellar aged beer has a much more pronounced fruitiness to it with a little more warmth to it that brings out the phenols a bit more. I think I prefer the cellar aged version, but both are beautiful beers with a deep copper hue when the sun hits them.

While the recipe is fantastic and I'm enjoying the hell out of it, I would definitely change the following: get rid of the Brun Fonce sugar completely and use 2 pounds of D-180 along with 1 pound of Golden Candi Syrup while keeping everything else the same. It'd lighten the color up (it's a bit dark for style), cut down on the fruitiness of the beer a bit (again bringing more into style), and it would drop the ABV by a bit over 1%. While the beer doesn't taste boozy, it drinks way smoother than 8.8% and gets you buzzed pretty good pretty quickly (is that really a complaint).

And (toot toot) it took 2nd in the club competition. Not bad Belgian Dubbel, not bad at all.

Final numbers for my Belgian Dubbel:

• Batch Size: 11 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.075
• Final Gravity: 1.008
• ABV: 8.8%
• IBU: 22

The Kölsch, with your annoying umlaut that I'm going to stop using now, is a beer brewers beer to drink and make. It's not a hoptacular IPA or a chocolaty, roasted alcohol bomb of a Russian Imperial Stout or a mouth puckering sour from beyond the pellicle. Rather it's light and delicate whose complexities only come out when you look for them. They're on the lower end of the ABV spectrum with a touch of malt sweetness, and a subtle hoppiness that plays with the light fruitiness from the yeast esters. And if you make a mistake, you'll know it.

For this beer I used a malt specifically made in Cologne, Germany, where Kolsch beer comes from. It's from the Schill Malz company and is aptly named "Kolsch Malt". It's a touch darker than Pilsner malt, and from this it lends a bit more malty complexity to a beer than traditional Pilsner does.

Kolsch recipe for 11 gallons:

Grains:

• 17 lbs 2 oz Schill Kolsch Malt
• 14 oz Wheat Malt

Single infusion mash at 150F for 1 hour, then add boiling water to 170F and let that sit for 15 minutes before draining and batch sparging.

Boil additions (60 minute boil):

• 0.4 oz Warrior (17% AA) @ First Wort Hopping (13 IBUs)
• 4 oz Strisselspalt (1.3% AA) @ 30 minutes
• 4 oz Strisselspalt (1.3% AA)  @ 10 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• I used WLP029 yeast for this beer because it gives off wonderful pear/apple/Riesling wine notes that are necessary for a proper Kolsch. It was fermented at 60F for 10 days before raising up to 67F for 4 days to clean up and finish. After that I cold crashed and let sit for a few weeks before kegging.

Brew day was brew day. You mill, you mash, you drain, you sparge, you boil, you hop, you cool, you fill, you chill, you pitch, you wait, and then you drink. So instead of going into the process, I feel like I should talk about that hop up there that most people may not be too familiar with. Strisselspalt hops are one of the few French hops. They're low alpha acid hops (though 1.3% is ridiculously low even for them) that have nice lemongrass undertones with a bit of floral sweetness to them. I feel like they meld great with the yeast characteristics of a Kolsch, and the first iteration of this beer I brewed (with Pilsner, Munich, and Wheat malt) came out darn tasty so who was I to change my hop schedule?

With all 11 gallons gone to a better place, there is one thing that concerned me with this beer that warrants changing. The hop character was a bit too floral and that came across a touch soapy to my taste buds. But it wasn't every time I had it, so it was definitely palatte dependent. I didn't get any comments about it from the dozens of others that tried this beer, though they may have just been being nice. One of the more traditional brewers at my homebrew shop, whose praise is hard to come by, would continually reach for my growler of kolsch to refill his glass with many other beers open on the table...which is about as high praise as you'll get from him. And it ended up taking 2nd in my homebrew club's Kolsch competition and 3rd in a Best of Show inter-club competition between my club and another club, so it's not like that flavor was all that offensive.

But I will still make an adjustment to the hops the next time I brew this beer (and I will be brewing it again). That change would come in the form of using half the amount of Strisselspalt and making up the difference with Saaz. I feel like upping the herbal spice notes to play off the pome fruit from the yeast, mingled with a more subdued citrus/lemony character from the Strisselspalt will make an already solid beer even better.

Final numbers for my Kolsch:

• Batch Size: 11 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.048
• Final Gravity: 1.009
• ABV: 5.12%
• IBU: 28

Over a year ago I was interviewed for a homebrew blog over at Bottle Trade. In it I talked about how one of my dreams is to go to Norway and make traditional Norwegian Farmhouse beers, or, at the very least, get some kveik and brew some here. Well, thank's to White Labs, I finally got a chance to somewhat make my dreams come true! They recently came out with a Nordic Yeast Blend (WLP611) that is made up of a few wild yeast strains captured in Denmark. While not the traditional kveik of Norway, this would at least get me to the right part of the world.

I chose to do a very simply wheat beer base for this beer for two reasons: 1) Wheat beers are delicious and 2) I could brew 11 gallons of the base and use half for this beer and half for a sour blond to start my sour barrel project. Initial impressions of the yeast was that it made a really good hefe/wit style beer but it wasn't overly aggressive with the yeast character. So I grabbed grains and yeast from my local homebrew store, Blackstone Valley Brewing, and got to work.

Nordic Wheat, batch size 5.5 gallons (all amounts halved from the actual brew day):

Grains

• 4.5 lbs German Pale Malt
• 4.5 lbs Wheat Malt

Mash at 148 for 60 minutes. Bring temp up to 170F by adding boiling water and let rest for 15 minute before draining and batch sparging.

Boil additions (60 minute boil):

• .25 oz Warrior @ First Wort Hopping (total of 15 IBUs)
• 1 oz Northern Brewer @ 5 minutes

I used White Labs Nordic Yeast Blend (WLP611) for the yeast. It can ferment anywhere between 50F and 86F, which is pretty damned broad. I saved some of my starter so I'll definitely be using this again, they mention it being good for ciders, so maybe I'll make a 1 gallon test batch when fresh pressed ciders come to town in a month or two.

This is one of the few beers I've fermented outside my fermentation chamber in a long time. I cooled the wort to 75F and immediately pitched the yeast in my basement. The temp got up to around 80F at the peak of fermentation and by the 4th day the krausen was all but gone and the temp was dropping to what my basement is at in mid-August, which is a balmy 70 degrees.

Another beautifully simple brew day. I always marvel at some people who can never get through a brew session without the world exploding, I guess it helps all I have to worry about is a lazy dog sleeping next to me. After my West Coast New England IPA brew day where I had to weigh out hop after hop after hop after hop, it was nice to just have a bing-bang-boom 2 hop brew. There's a guy I know that absolutely hates Northern Brewer hops, but I really dig the earthy pine and touch of fruity mint it brings to the party; especially when you have a solid backbone of yeast characteristics that would blend well with that profile.

After chilling my wort down to 75F, I filled up my carboy and brought it down to my basement. I'll admit, it was odd to not turn on my fermentation chamber and get that going, but hey, this yeast seems to ferment at whatever temperature you give it, so I wasn't concerned. I also wanted to get this beer in a keg and carbed up ASAP because I was bringing it to the Homebrew Jamboree up in Tamsworth, New Hampshire so going on the warm end would get me to where I needed it to be faster.

After about 4 days the krausen had fallen but the beer still looking like it was churning away, on day 10 that activity had been gone for a solid 72 hours so I threw the carboy into the fermentation chamber and cold crashed for a few days before kegging. That's right, I didn't check FG. In fact, I rarely check FG until after I keg and package my beers. When I bottle, I will certainly make sure everything is finished, but I've never had issues this way. Once kegged/carbed up, I tried the beer and wasn't really blown away with it. It was an easy drinker for sure, solid yeast character, a touch of banana/fruitiness, some spice but no really clove (which I actually dug a lot), but it was lacking a bit of a punch in flavor overall. Luckily I had a bunch of orange infused vodka from when I was going to do a smoked breakfast beer so I added a 1/4 teaspoon to a pint and tried that. And that made a huge difference. The touch of orange made it like a very pretentious tasting Blue Moon, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I dumped in about 1/2 cup total into the keg and was happy with how everything came together.

I brought the Nordic Wheat and the West Coast NEIPA to the Jamboree, branding the IPA as San Diengland IPA. People came back for both beers throughout the day so I considered both of them a success. There were a lot of non-IPA drinkers (weird, I know) there that were quite pleased that our homebrew club (W.I.Z.A.R.D.S.) had a good variety of non-IPA/hoppy beers: raspberry Belgian single, rhubarb and regular saison, a nice rich porter, and Munich helles. I did have one guy tell me that my IPA was the best beer that they had the entire day, which was really awesome since there were like 300 beers on tap (while he didn't look like he sampled all 300, there were a few that did!).

Would I brew this beer again? You know, I probably would. The more I drink the beer, the more I like it. The yeast character was good, not truly hefe, not truly Belgian, but a good mix of both. I would probably get a bit more out there with the hops though and punch it up with a dry hop. I really dug the Idaho 7/El Dorado in the WCNEIPA and I could see that combo working here. Since this beer base will be my sour base, I'll be brewing 11 gallons of this once a year, so next year I'll get a chance to make those changes and see how that goes.

Final numbers for my Nordic Wheat Beer:

Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.010
ABV: 4.6%
IBU: 20

Living in San Diego for 7 years I learned one thing and only one thing: IPAs are bitter, crisp, dank, and clear. Living in New England for just over 1 year I've learned one thing and only one thing: IPAs are juicy, creamy, tropical, and hazy. So what does a boy who learned the ways of IPA through the mind of a West Coaster do when he finds himself living in the land of haze? Why brew an IPA that's bitter, creamy, dank, juicy, tropical, and hazy...that's what!

I'm about to say something controversial: Tree House beers aren't quaffable and that really ruins their appeal to me. It's honestly hard for me to drink a full pint of most of their beers, splitting and sharing is the way to go (point of clarification: the few ounces of their hoppy beers that I drink from time to time are outstanding). Why is this? There's no bitter backbone that helps to dry out and recharge your palate for that next sip! Places like Trillium and Bissell Brothers have that bitter base that helps make their beers truly magical. I just want to emphasize this once again that Tree House makes tasty beers, but if I see those three breweries on tap at a bar, I'm choosing Trillium or Bissell Brothers 10 times out of 10.

West Coast New England IPA, batch size 12 gallons:

Grains

• 10.5 lbs German Pale Malt
• 10.5 lbs American 2-row
• 4 lbs Flaked Oats

Mash at 149 for 60 minutes, I know this seems low, but with the oats and the added chloride, you'll still get plenty of body but will be left with a cleaner, drier finish. Bring temp up to 170F by adding boiling water and let rest for 15 minute before draining and batch sparging.

Boil additions (60 minute boil):

• 1.4 oz Warrior @ First Wort Hopping (total of 40 IBUs)
• 2 oz Idaho 7, 2 oz El Dorado, 2 oz Galaxy @ flamout, cool to 175F
• 4 oz Idaho 7, 4 oz El Dorado, 4 oz Galaxy @ whirlpool for 30 minutes at 175F

Fermentation Plan:

I used Vermont Ale Yeast from Yeast Bay that I got from a friend while living in San Diego. I built up a starter just over 2L, harvested some for storage, and then cold crashed the rest, decanted, and added 500ml of 1.040 wort for 4 hours with stirring before adding evenly to my carboys.

Fermented at 65F for 3 days, adding 3 oz Idaho 7, 3 oz El Dorado, and 2 oz Galaxy (split evenly between two carboys) on Day 3. Raised temp to 70F for 3 days, adding 4 oz Idaho 7 and 4 oz El Dorado on Day 6. Dropped temp to 65F and let sit for 7 more days before cold crashing on Day 13. Cold crashed 72 hours before kegging and burst carbing on Day 16.

With a recipe and fermentation plan of action in place, I needed to work on water chemistry. I have pretty neutral well water, with no adjustments it makes great pilsners, saisons, and dark beers. But for this guy, I knew I'd have to play around a bit. My goal was to get my chloride quite a bit higher, all the way up to 150 ppm while pushing sulfate to 100 ppm. The chloride will give the beer a creamier/fuller mouth feel and (according to legend) keep the beer hella hazy, while the sulfate will make sure the hops pack a punch and sing their beautiful song. To do this with my water, I had to add a total of 6.3 g gypsum, 6.3 g of epsom salt, 18 g of CaCl2 to my water, which was just over 18 gallons.

Brew day went off without a hitch, which is great. Mashed in as always, ran my runnings only until they were clear of husks because this wasn't ever going to get clearer going into the kettle, and tossed in hops when I needed to. I use muslin bags to prevent all hop matter from going into the kettle (a bunch still makes it through though), usually I dangle them into the kettle from a high tech wooden dowel, but today I just tied off the bags and tossed them in, keeping about 4 ounces of hops max in each bag due to expansion and wanting to make sure I extracted that most flavor out of them.

After the boil was done, I tossed the flame out charge of hops into the kettle, killed the flame, and turned on my wort chiller to cool down to 175 while stirring. Once I reached temp, I tossed in the whirlpool hops and let steep for 30 minutes, stirring every 5. After 30 minutes was up, I finished cooling and brought the carboys down to my basement to finish cooling to 65F in my fermentation fridge. At this point is when I decanted my starter and got it into vitality mode by adding 500ml of wort and spinning on a stir plate for 4 hours. This gets the yeast primed and ready to divide. It'll fully oxygenate the cells, getting them building up materials for cell division, and make sure they're not too shocked when going into the super hoppy home I created for them. Fermentation kicked off like a bandit, before going to bed I could already see activity, and by the next morning the krausen was looking great.

After adding the dry hops and cold crashing, the moment of truth came when I opened up my fermenter and saw the carboys were as hazy as a San Francisco morning. Success! But what about the flavor? That part will come later...just hold on. I kegged the beers into CO2 purged kegs, then filled and purged the head space of the kegs 10x at 35 PSI which should all but have eliminated any O2 left. After I was done, my basement smelled of dank fruity tropical hops and I was pleased.

After burst carbing at 35PSI for 24 hours, I dropped the PSI down to 13, pulled a little pour and smiled a big hoppy smile. Stone fruit, tropical fruit, a bit of danky pine, and citrus tickled my nostrils and then I sipped. The initial rush of grapefruit bitterness fell away to a melange of juicy fruity hops that lingered until the back end dryness allowed them to fade, leaving your taste buds begging for another sip. So I obliged.

Did I hit what I was shooting for? I'd say so. It's a bit more aggressively hopped than my favorite Trillium beers, but doesn't quite have the same super juicy punch as their beers, which I'm OK with. Overall it's a great beer and my favorite IPA I've brewed to date. What would I change? I'm not sure. I really like what the El Dorado and Galaxy brought to the table and the resin/pine added from the Idaho 7 gave it that West Coast punch I was looking for. I'd almost like this more as a slightly smaller beer (4.5-5%) with 20% oats in the grist using all German Pale Malt while turning down that hops just slightly (initial IBUs to 25, 75% less hops at each step). But while this is on tap, I'm not going to complain one bit.

Final numbers for my West Coast New England IPA:

• Batch Size: 12 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.057
• Final Gravity: 1.009
• ABV: 6.3%
• IBU: 76 (according to BeerSmith, hard to say exactly what the flameout and whirlpool hops contribute beyond the initial 40IBU charge)

The base of the rauchbier (if you remove the smoked malt) comes across as a nice quaffable bock. The longer boil helps build some of those distinct bock characteristics and I really like how those flavors mingle with the smoke.

Rauchbier recipe, batch size 5.5 gallons:

Grains

• 6 lbs Beechwood Smoked Malt
• 2 lbs Vienna Malt
• 1 lbs Munich Malt
• 1 lbs Pilsner Malt
• 4 oz Carafa III

Start by doing a protein rest for 15 minutes at 118F with a 0.9 quart/lb water ratio. Bring temp up to 150F by adding boiling water, rest for 30 minutes. Add more boiling water to hit 162F for another 30 minutes. Finally mash out at 170F, drain and sparge.

Boil additions (120 minute boil):

• 1.5 oz Tettnang  @ First Wort Hopping (15IBUs)
• 0.5 oz Tettnang @ 30 minutes
• 1 oz  Hallertauer @ 10 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• I used Saflager 34/70 dried yeast for this beer, using 2 packages that were rehydrated in warm water prior to addition. I like the smooth, round flavor you get from this yeast with this beer.
•  Ferment at 54F for 7 days, remove probe from side of carboy and set chamber to 70F and hold at 70F for 1 week, the cold crash down to 32F and hold for 2 weeks before kegging.

I recently switched which side of the house I brew on. Now that winter is over, the wood we had on our back patio is mostly gone, so I can set up and be a bit more protected from the wind that blows through our breezeway. It’s nice, the burner works more efficiently, the sun isn’t beating down on me at the end of the brew day, and it’s a bit more private so my neighbors don’t have to speculate what the heck I’m cooking up in the front of my house.

I had originally planned to make this into a new style of breakfast beer. Instead of the standard thick, sweet, stout that goes well with donuts, I wanted to make a smoky base beer and finish it with maple and orange. After the beer finished fermentation, I took a bit to play with, added a touch of maple syrup and some orange infused vodka (1 ounce of fresh zest into half a cup of vodka) and wasn’t blown away by it. I really didn’t like the maple component, but the orange worked really well. It melds well with the backend sweet malt finish and rounds out the smoke profile a bit. Instead of adding all the orange to the keg, I add about a teaspoon of the vodka to a pint glass and then fill it up from the keg when I’m feeling like it.

I did a similar thing last year with this base recipe, adding star anise to it by making a anise infused vodka, but I added that all straight to the keg. It was a beer brewed to honor a friend; he likes cigars and Jagermeister…so I thought a smoked beer with licorice notes would do well by him. And it really did.

I really enjoy this base, but after brewing it twice, I do think a few things can change. I think the smoke level might be just a touch muted, it’s well balanced as is, but I think the maltiness of the beer could hold up to some more smoke. That means I can drop the pilsner malt completely and do 7 pounds of smoked malt. Along with that, I’ll do 1.5 pounds each of the Vienna and Munich, which will bump up that melanoidin component a touch. One of the reasons I do a 120 minute boil on this is to build those melanoidin compounds, which play super well with the smokiness. I figure if I bump up the smoked malt from ~60% to ~70%, I’ll want that extra layer of complexity to sing with the smoke.

Final numbers for my Rauchbier:

• Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.057
• Final Gravity: 1.012
• ABV: 5.9%
• IBU: 22

The porter base for this is pretty dark and a lot of people could call it a stout and not be wrong. But I call it a porter because I brewed it and damn it, I can name it. The cherry flavor comes from cherry concentrate, it's the first time I used it for this beer, usually I use dried cherries I rehydrate in boiling water, but I wanted to try something a bit easier this time around, and not much is easier than cracking open a bottle, measuring it out, and dumping it into a carboy.

Tart Cherry Porter recipe, batch size 11 gallons (both carboys got ~5.5 gallons of wort):

Grains

• 21 lbs 2-row
• 2 lbs Crystal Malt 20L
• 2 lbs Crystal Malt 60L
• 2 lbs Crystal Malt 120L
• 2 lbs Pale Chocolate Malt
• 2 lbs Roasted Barley

Mash at 154F for 1 hour, add boiling water to raise temp to 170F, then drain and batch sparge, boil for 60 min

Boil additions:

• 1.5 oz Warrior @ First Wort Hopping
• 1 oz  each East Kent Goldings and Fuggles @ 15 minutes
• Irish Moss @15 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• Grew up 1L starter of WLP090 California Super Yeast, and used 500ml for each carboy
• Ferment at 65F for 7 days, then brought up to 70F and hold at 70F for 1 week
• Add 2 cups of Tart Cherry Concentrate to each carboy and let sit 2 weeks at 70F
• Bring to basement for 3 days to settle, rack to kegs/bottle.

On brew day, I filled up my boil kettle with water straight from my tap, added 7.6g of CaCl2, and heated up the water so I could mash in. After conversion was finished, I added boiling water to heat the mash up to 170 so I could kill enzymatic activity and started collecting my first runnings. I then added 3.6 grams of baking soda so the wort collecting in the boil kettle, to help cut the acidity/astringency of the roasted barley on the final product.

The rest of the day was a nice, normal brew day. I had 2 full carboys at the end of the day, and dumped in the yeast after they finished cooling down to 65F. Fermentation was great, after ramping up and letting the yeast do its clean-up thing, I added the tart cherry concentrate to each carboy (2 cups each) and let them sit 2 weeks to make sure all the excess sugars were fermented out.

I kegged up 5 gallons, and then made a 1 gallon test batch using one container of dried peanut butter to make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Porter. I let this test batch sit 2 weeks on the peanut butter before bottling. The remaining 4 gallons were bottled for aging.

After the Tart Cherry Porter was carbed up, I obviously started drinking it. The concentrate didn't taste much different than the dried cherries I've used in the past, so I'll definitely keep that moving forward since it's so much easier. The flavor is wonderfully roasty, smooth, not overly sweet, with nice cherry finish in the background. After the PBJ Porter aged and carbed up, I cracked open a bomber of that and wow, the peanut butter turned the roasted flavors into chocolate with a good nutty base, with the same cherry finish. 

Final numbers for my Tart Cherry Porter:

• Batch Size: 11 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.072
• Final Gravity: 1.014
• ABV: 7.6%
• IBU: 49

I knew when I got my barrel I was going to put a few clean beers in it before switching it over to funky/sour beers. The first beer to go through the barrel, a Russian Imperial Stout, turned out fantastic, but was also an obvious choice for a whiskey barrel. For beer number two, I wanted to go a bit off the books and do something small. A beer that would be complimented by the lingering bits of whiskey flavor left in the barrel and could do with a bit of a body punch up by the oak. Something that you don't regularly see on the shelves of your favorite liquor store. The more I thought about it, the more it became obvious, I was going to to an English Dark Mild and age it just until the oak started to peek through.

Milds, as you could guess by their name, are mild beers by nature. They don't have huge flavor profiles and don't get you drunk just by smelling them. They're low in ABV and while they can pack a good punch flavor-wise, they're beers meant to be drunk in large amounts, so there's nothing too aggressive about them. There are lighter and darker milds, and can run the flavor gamut from sweet and caramelly to dry and roasty with chocolate, dark fruit, coffee, or licorice notes sprinkled in. Dark milds are often akin to a light porter, with a bit of roast and toast to their malt profile, with some chocolate/coffee underpinnings, and I thought this would be a great beer to put through my barrel after the stout.

English Dark Mild recipe, batch size 12 gallons (increased to 12 gallons as the barrel is a bit larger than 10 gallons and I wanted to fill it up more):

Grains

• 14 lbs Maris Otter
• 1 lb 4 oz Crystal Malt 120L
• 12 oz Crystal Malt 40L
• 8 oz Pale Chocolate Malt (350 SRM)
• 6 oz Black Malt (500 SRM)

Mash at 154F for 1 hour, add boiling water to raise temp to 170F, then drain and batch sparge, boil for 60 min

Boil additions:

• 1 oz East Kent Goldings @ First Wort Hopping
• 1 oz  East Kent Goldings @ 30 minutes
• rish Moss @15 minutes
• 1 oz each East Kent Goldings and Fuggles @ 10 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• Grew up 1L starter of WLP013 London Ale Yeast, and used 500ml for each carboy
• Ferment at 65F for 7 days, then brought up to 70F and hold at 70F for 1 week
• Bring carboys to basement (65F-70F), let settle, then rack to barrel
• Add 100g of sugar (boiled and cooled in 1 cup of water) to barrel to trigger small amount of fermentation to help purge oxygen from both the beer and barrel to help prevent oxidation.

On brew day, I filled up my boil kettle with water straight from my tap, added 7.6g of CaCl2, and heated up the water so I could mash in. After mashing, I added boiling water to heat the mash up to 170 so I could kill enzymatic activity and started collecting my first runnings.

I ended up with really, really good efficiency (which is to be expected when you're shooting for a beer around 1.038 final gravity. So I ended up collecting almost 3 extra gallons of wort that I boiled down on my stove top to 1 gallon with a small amount of tettnanger hops that I added a bit of my WLP013 starter to and some bottle dregs of a Modern Times sour to, just to see what would happen. The OG on this experiment was around 1.055, with IBUs around 15.

For the boil, I usually collect around 12 gallons and boil down to ~10.5, but since I wanted 12 gallons at the end of the brew, I ended up with an almost full pot, which made preventing boil-overs fun for the first 15 minutes. 

After the boil, the wort was cooled rather quickly, added to my carboys, and then chilled down to 65F. I added the yeast and fermented as planned and brought the carboys to the basement after 2 weeks to settle a bit more before racking to the barrel when it was available.

I ended up bottling and kegging the stout on Halloween, and the  mild was ready too, so after draining the barrel of the stout, I immediately added back the dark mild. Initial impressions were good, some earthy/tobacco notes from the fuggles hops and yeast, and a nice malt presence with a hint of chocolate roast coming through.

After 3 weeks in the barrel, about the same amount of time as the stout stayed in, I stole a sample and was very, very excited. The body of the beer definitely bulked up a bit, there was just a subtle touch of oak on the back-end, and the whiskey notes were poking their little head into the fray too. I left it go another week just to pump up those notes by a touch and then kegged it. The final version is such a treat, real easy to drink, the subdued whiskey notes play so well with the malts from the beer, there are hints of coconut and a lingering sweetness that really works well. For a small beer, the body isn't watery or overly thin. I'm already getting sad and missing the beer when I drink the last of it.

Final numbers for my Barrel Aged English Dark Mild:

• Batch Size: 12 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.038
• Final Gravity: 1.009
• ABV: 3.8%
• IBU: 21

I've done wood aged beers in the past, both clean and sour, but those were always done with toasted oak cubes that were either boiled or soaked in spirits before being added to the beer for aging. So this will be my first beer using an actual barrel and I couldn't be more excited. I have at least two clean beers I want to put though the barrel to strip away most of the big, bold flavors that the wood and whiskey will impart before aging sours in it, the first one will be detailed below, a big, luscious, thick Russian Imperial Stout, and the second will be a slightly left of center choice in an English Dark Mild.

For the Russian Imperial Stout, I'm using a recipe I've used multiple times before and really enjoy. Last year I brewed the same recipe, and aged it on oak cubes soaked in Crown Royal. I ended up loving it so much I blew through the keg and bottles before they were even a few months old! The recipe for this years batch is as follows:

Russian Imperial Stout Recipe, batch size 10.5 gallons:

Grains

• 26 lbs American 2-Row

• 2 lbs Chocolate Malt (350 SRM)

• 2 lbs Flaked Oats (Quick Oats from the store)

• 1 lbs Crystal Malt 40L

• 8oz Crystal Malt 120L

• 8oz Black Patent Malt (500 SRM)

Mash at 156F for 1 hour, batch sparge, and boil for 90 min

Boil additions:

• 2.25 oz Warrior Hops @First Wort Hopping

• 1 oz each Glacier and Liberty hops @30 minutes

• 0.75 oz of Norther Brewer @15 minutes

• 2 lbs of Dark Brown Sugar @15 minutes

• Irish Moss @15 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• Grew up 2L starter of WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast, and used 1L for each carboy

• Ferment at 62F for 5 days, then free rise to 70F and hold at 70F for 1 week

• Bring carboys to basement (65F-70F), let settle for 3 days, then rack to barrel

• Add 100g of dark brown sugar (boiled and cooled in 1 cup of water) to help purge oxygen from both the beer and barrel to help prevent oxidation.

It was another simple brew day, which is always good to have. I filled up my boil kettle with water straight from my tap, made no water adjustments, and heated up the water so I could mash in. After mashing, I added boiling water to heat the mash up to 170 so I could kill enzymatic activity and start collecting my first runnings.

The boil went off without a hitch, this was kind of a kitchen sink hops beer, using up stuff I had in my freezer that I knew would go well with the style, but that would fade gently into the night as it ages. When adding the brown sugar, you have to be a bit careful to make sure you stir real well after the addition to make sure it all gets into solution and doesn't just scald and burn on the bottom of your kettle.

With the boil complete, I chilled the beer down to around 75F before filling up my carboys and then placing them in my fermentation chamber set at 62F where I let them sit until both carboys cooled down to that temp. I measure out 1L of WLP090 starter and added it to each carboy and then shut the door to let the yeast do their thing.

After 5 full days, I set my chamber to 70F, and let it free rise to that temp and then held it for 1 week before bringing the carboys down into my basement and let the beer settle for 3 days before transferring to the barrel. I added some extra sugar to the beer after transfer to help purge any oxygen that may have been introduced during the transfer process and also to purge the head space in the barrel.

I tasted the beer after 2 weeks in the barrel and was in love. There was a big whiskey nose on it, though the flavor didn't overpower the beer itself. You could start to get hints of the oak barrel character coming through, but I wanted just a touch more so I let it go another week and a half before bottling 5 gallons in a mix of 22oz bombers and 12oz bottles for competition. The remaining beer was kegged and force carbonated.

I started pulling samples after a few days on CO2 and was floored. For a bigger beer that was only a month and a half old, it was phenomenally balanced. I could just smell the beer all night and get just as much enjoyment out of it as I was getting from drinking it. A warm whiskey nose with a background of coconut, vanilla, and chocolate. And the taste, oh man the taste. It was a bit thin going into the barrel, but coming out it's luscious and coats your mouth in a big chocolaty stout that's got a hint of bitterness from the hops and a whole lot of oak and whiskey shining through. This is hands down the best beer I've brewed to date and everyone I've shared it with has loved it too. 

Final numbers for my Barrel Aged Russian Imperial Stout:

• Batch Size: 10.5 gallons

• Original Gravity: 1.084

• Final Gravity: 1.021

• ABV: 8.92%

• IBU: 65

Trappist Ales are Belgian in nature, which means they're full of yeast driven phenols and esters that cover a wide range of gravities and colors. They also have to be brewed in a specially designated Trappist monastery by monks to truly be "Trappist." Now I don't live in a monastery and I'm definitely not a monk, but that doesn't mean I can't brew the styles of beer that are brewed in world renowned monasteries and drink the beers like monks drink.

The Trappist single is one of the newer BJCP styles, but that doesn't mean it only came about recently. Traditionally the Trappist single was drank by the monks at the monastery; they'd sell their stronger Dubbels, Tripels, and Quads outside the Abbey walls because people would pay more money for the stronger beers. They're quite pale in nature, low in ABV, relatively hoppy, and have a solid malt presence with a light fruitiness (citrus, stone, or pome) and spice character (more clove like than pepper) from the yeast.

Recipe for 5.5 gallon batch of beer:

• 8lbs Belgian Pilsner Malt
• 1lb Pale 6-row Malt
• 0.75lbs Biscuit Malt
• 0.25lbs Honey Malt

Mash at 148F for 20 minutes, add boiling water to raise temp to 160F for 40 minutes, add boiling water to raise temp to 170F for 15 minutes. Boil for 90 minutes.

Boil Additions:

• 0.75 oz Perle first wort hopping @90 minutes
• 0.25 oz Perle @30 minutes
• 0.4 oz Perle and 0.5 oz Saaz @15 minutes
• Irish Moss @15 minutes
• 0.6 oz Perle and 0.5 oz Saaz @5 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• White Labs WLP500 -  Trappist Ale
• Pitch at 62F and every 24 hours raise temperature 1F until you hit 70F. Keep at 70F for a week

The grain bill is built off of the 2015 BJCP style guide for the Trappist single, where they mention that notes of biscuit and honey can be present, the 6-row addition comes from what Spencer Brewery does (the only Trappist Brewery in America that's right here in Massachusetts) it should help thin out the beer and give a complimentary grain flavor to the Pilsner malt. I went traditional with the hops, using Perle and Saaz, which will help boost the fruit and spice notes. For yeast I went with WLP500, it is suppose to give a mild earthy/spice presence when started low and then I wanted to slowly ramp up the temp just to 70 and let it sit there to give some fruity esters time to develop, but not too much of either as to overpower the malts and hops.

The mash schedule is something I do a lot with my German style beers, doing the two step infusion mash at a lower and higher temp gives both beta and alpha amylase a chance to do their thing without the other mucking things up for them. In the mid 140s, beta rules the day while alpha is barely active, making simple sugars. Around 160F, alpha becomes active and beta will denature, allowing the rest of the converted starches to be longer and more complex. This gives you a lot of very simple sugars that ferment completely out, but also more complex sugars that will give your beer a bit of body, flavor, and sweetness. Since I mash in a a simple cooler and don't have any fancy heating circulation setup, I have to add boiling water to hit my target temps. Luckily BeerSmith does a great job with these calculations, allowing me to hit the temps with ease.

While I had no hitches on brew day, getting my starter going and beer fermenting was a different story. I had a fresh vial of yeast, made 1L of 1.040 starting wort, pitched the yeast, and then didn't really see signs of fermentation after 24 hours. The solution definitely got more turbid and it smelled like it was doing something, but there was no krausen and I couldn't really see any CO2 bubbles working their way to the surface. So, after the wort cooled down to 62F, I pitched anyways assuming everything fermented out in the starter overnight and I just missed it. I should have just let the wort sit in my fermentation chamber for another 12-24 hours and let the starter go longer because my kitchen was quite cool, but I didn't because, hey...what's the worst that could happen?

Day 1 at 62F: No signs of fermentation, no big deal, it's a little cool for Belgian yeast, I'll see something tomorrow. Swirled the carboy to rouse up the yeast.

Day 2 at 63F: No signs of fermentation, ok, this is weird, I've never had a beer not show signs of fermentation after 48 hours, even lagers at 50F. Swirled the carboy again to rouse up the yeast.

Day 3 at 64F: No signs of fermentation, how the hell did I kill my yeast? Should I go run and pick some more up? Hey at least this tells me my technique is good and I don't have any infection after 72 hours, got to find that silver lining. Swirl it!

Day 4 at 65F: Giant krausen about 5 hours after increasing temp. Relief...but what if it's just all wild yeast and bacteria finally taking off? I'll just turn it into a wild ale, it'll still be beer and it may even be good.

Day 5 at 66F: Activity already slowing, grabbed a quick sample just to make myself feel better. No sourness, good flavor already, guess I made beer.

After finishing the ramp up to 70F and letting it sit there for 1 week, I bottled 1 gallon of it to 3.3 volumes of CO2 in thick walled 12oz bottles. My local homebrew club is having a competition with this style in November and I wanted to make sure my beer would be carbed to style guideline. The rest of the beer was kegged and carbed.

It doesn't quite have the fruit esters I wanted, but the spice notes from the phenols are spot on. I was really glad to not have bubblegum notes, I was worried that the yeast could have been stressed from the long lag time and would give me a bubblegum bomb. The bitterness and flavors from the hops are great, I think adding a late charge of either Mandarina Bavaria or Haulertau Blanc would be an interesting way to get some more fruit notes in there without having to fuss with yeast temps. The FG was higher than I would have expected, but the beer definitely doesn't come across as sweet and finishes quite dry. I imagine that a bigger/healthier starter would have chewed through more sugars to finish a few points lower. When I brew this again, I'll start at 64F and ramp up to the mid 70s, with a starter I'm more confident in. I've since read that WLP500 can be a bit fickle at lower temps, and I'm guessing that's what I saw with both my starter and beer.

Overall, I really like this beer, it goes down easy, tantalizes the taste buds into wanting more, and as it warms to room temp, you get to taste new layers of flavor.

Final numbers for my Trappist Single:

• Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.048
• Final Gravity: 1.012
• ABV: 4.7%
• IBU: 43

The third and final beer that I brewed for the BrewUnited Challenge was an amber ale. This was my entry to the hoppy category. Part of the reason I picked the amber ale over a more traditional IPA was the fact that our hop choices were a bit limited and I guessed that there would be fewer entries in this category too. The fact that I could actually use a bunch of Crystal 60L and not have to try and hide it also was appealing to me.

As always, I started off looking at the Amber Ale Style guidelines to guide my recipe design. I came up with this recipe fairly quickly for a 5.5 gallon batch of beer:

• 6.75lbs German Pilsner
• 2lbs Munich - light
• 1lb Crystal 60L
• 0.25lbs Flaked Wheat (toasted at 300 until golden)

Mash at 152 for an hour and boil 90 min

Boil additions:

• 0.5oz Centennial @60 minutes
• Irish Moss @15 minutes
• 1oz Northdown @5 minutes
• 1.5oz Centenial @140F for 25 minutes

Fermentation plan:

• White Labs WLP007 – Dry English Ale Yeast
• Ferment at 65F for a week, then raise to 70F for a week

This was the only recipe where I locked in the grain bill pretty quickly and didn’t make much of a change. I really only dropped the pilsner a touch and increased the wheat while deciding to keep it untoasted because I was a bit worried about some toasted flavors coming through in the final beer. The hops to use and the hop schedule though, that was a different story. Centennial was an easy, obvious choice for a hop forward beer, but what was going to be my second hop? Besides Saaz (which I didn’t think would stand up to the flavors of the beer I was making in my head), the other 4 hops are all intertwined and related to each other, so I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to decide which of the 4 hops to use when all can pretty much be substituted for each other. Reading more about Northdown, a few places brought up its more spicy/piney characteristics with fruity undertones and I felt that would go well to also cut some of the inherent sweetness that would be coming though with the Crystal 60L. After reading a bit more about the style guidelines, I decided to punch it up in the hops department by quite a bit more than I initially decided (this was the “hoppy” category after all). I tossed in a 20 minute addition of both hops to get some deeper flavors/aromas/bitterness into the beer, and adjusted the steep/whirlpool addition slightly. I added less total hops for that addition, but didn’t chill the wort down before adding them. Based on various observations from a slew of homebrewers, a long steep after flameout is akin to a dry hop without the potential grassy off flavors. Most of the time these steeps push 60-80 minutes, but those are for big, full, dank IPAs and I didn’t want to completely blow out the malt on this beer, so I dropped it to 30 minutes. I kept WLP007 because it attenuates really well, adds a touch of fruitiness that should again play well with the hops (I used in a split batch IPA recently with Vermont Ale Yeast in the other half of the beer…and I may have preferred WLP007), and drops clear fast. I also upped the boil time by 30 minutes hoping to drive a bit more color and add some more flavor.

Finalized recipe for 5.5 gallons of Ambah Ale:

• 6.5lbs German Pilsner
• 2lbs Munich - light
• 1lb Crystal 60L
• 0.5lbs Flaked Wheat

Mash at 152F and boil for 120 minutes

Boil Additions:

• 0.5oz Centennial @60 minutes
• 0.5oz Centennial @20 minutes
• 0.5oz Northdown @20 minutes
• Irish moss @15 minutes
• 1oz northdown @5 minutes
• 1oz Centennial @ Flame Out, steep for 30 minutes before cooling
• 1oz Centennial and 0.5oz Northdown dry hopped for 7 days at 38

Fermentation Plan:

• White Labs WLP007 – Dry English Ale Yeast
• Ferment at 65F for a week, then raise to 70F for a week

Before I talk about the boring details of the brew day, I’d like to talk about the joys of a great local homebrew shop. I just moved 3000 miles from San Diego to rural Massachusetts where there are like 2 shops that are in close-ish proximity to me (one 40 minutes away and one 20 minutes away). In San Diego I was in walking distance to an amazing shop that had every grain you could wish for, a nice friendly staff, and a working brewery where they brewed stuff to sell in a little tasting attached to the store. I was pretty spoiled there and felt resigned that I’d probably not find anything close to that out here. For the Blonde I made for the competition, I ended up going to the one 40 minutes away because the closer one was closed the week I was wanting to brew (I hadn’t found that out until I made the drive down the day before, which already made me dislike that shop). My experience at the 40 mile one was frustratingly slow and annoying. There was one scale (not even digital), the worker had to weigh everything out, and when I showed up to get my stuff, there were two people ahead of me with insanely complex recipes that took forever for the guy to prepare. Then they didn’t have one of the hops I wanted so I had to make a quick change which really bugged me, the guy working wasn’t one to really talk about anything, so I just sat there in silence while he very slowly weighed everything out.

Now, fast forward to two days before Ambah’s brew day, I made the 20 minute drive down to the other homebrew shop (after calling to confirm that they were open), walked in around 6:15pm, and see 4 guys sitting at a table in the middle of the store sharing beers and shooting the breeze. They’re talking about how they make their beers and I wonder if I stumbled on a little homebrew club meeting and suddenly I feel a little out of place. The owner was behind the counter talking with another customer so I looked around the shop until he was free and I’m starting to think this place is going to annoy me too. When he was done, I asked him what the protocol was for his shop, he told me he weighs the grains, gets the hops, grabs the yeast, and while I’m waiting, I can have some beer with the guys. Well that started to swing things in their favor! He grabbed me a little tasting glass, one of the guys poured me a dry, crisp saison finished with Nelson hops and hibiscus that was quite good. All the while the owner talked about his shop, why he carries only certain company’s specialty grains, how he’s been at that location for like 20 years, the pride he takes when his customers win awards, and other random stuff (all the way from Patriots football to music to Star Wars). I ended up leaving an hour later after having sampled 2 homebrews and a few commercial beers that I’d never had before and knew I found a shop that I’ll be going back to whenever I need anything.

I suppose I should talk about the beer I brewed before this gets too long, but I want to focus more on some stuff I learned about dry hopping, so to speed things along, brew day went ok, I missed my target temp by 2 degrees (cooler morning than normal and I didn’t make strike water heat adjustments), ended up doing a no sparge day so I could get the proper temp for my mashout, and ended up with an OG of 1.049 instead of 1.052 because I added a bit more water than I was supposed to. Fermentation kicked up quickly, went all according to plan, and I was soon ready to dry hop the beer.

Now, for the dry hopping of this beer, I was going to get the beer to 65F, add the hops for 4 days, then cold crash before kegging, but I read this cool paper on hop compound solubilization during dry hopping at cold (40F) or warm (70F) temps using pellets or whole cones. They saw that linalool extraction was identical at the two temps (aroma compounds) but the alpha-acid extraction was faster at the warmer temp than the cold temp, though at 70F, they started to see alpha-acid amounts in solution start to fade after a few days with the hops in solution, whereas at 40F, alpha acids go slower into solution, but continue to rise during the 18 days they tested. Both linalool and alpha–acid extraction tend to flatline after around a week at 40F. Also of note, whole cones and pellet hops vary dramatically on linalool extraction during the dry hop, with pellet hops having 2 times the amount of linalool released vs whole cones. The alpha-acid extraction is identical. Based on all this, I decided to add my dry hops (pellets like I always use) at 40F for 7 days before racking to a keg and force carbonating.

After carbing up the beer and pouring my first pint, I was a bit worried. It had an astringent bite to it that really left me bummed. The flavors were good, I liked the sweetness from the malt profile, the hops had a nice bite to them but weren't harsh, aroma was a bit lacking, but the finish really got under my skin. It was drinkable, but not super enjoyable. Obviously I kept drinking it, and after about 2 weeks in the keg, that bite was gone and I was left with a smooth hoppy beer with a nice caramel touch. I'm guessing there was some carbonic acid that built up those first few days in the keg, but whatever it was, I'm glad it was gone before I bottled this guy up and shipped off the beers for judging!

Final numbers on my Ambah Ale:

• Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.049
• Final Gravity: 1.013
• ABV: 4.7%
• IBU: 44

This is the second beer I'll be talking about for a national competition called the BrewUnited Challenge. As a reminder, the point of the challenge is to make very disparate styles of beer from only 4 grains and 6 hops. Each recipe has to use all 4 grains and only 2 of the 6 hops. This beer is for the Balanced Category of the competition, and I chose to make a Blonde Ale.  A light, slightly malty, slightly hoppy beer and you can drink for days.

With the style for beer two decided, I went of the Blonde Ale style guidelines, I came up with the following recipe for a 5.5 gallon batch of beer:

• 6lbs German Pilsner
• 1lb Munich - light
• 1lb Flaked Wheat
• 2.5oz Crystal 60L

Mash at 150F for an hour and boil 90 minutes

Boil additions:

• 0.5oz Challenger @60 minutes
• 1oz Northdown @5 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• White Labs WLP001 – California Ale Yeast
• Ferment at 65F for a week, then raise to 70F for a week

Initially I was going to make a very low ABV blonde ale, hoping to punch up the maltiness and body with a good percentage of Munich and flaked wheat, with only the smallest touch of Crystal 60L. It had a very simple hops profile, most of my IBUs would be taken care of at the 60 minute addition, with a small amount of flavor coming in with the Northdown at the 5 minute addition. With a low projected OG and FG, I figured this should be enough hops to peak through and say hello. And I was going to use boring, plain, simple California Ale yeast because hey, why not? After punching in everything into BeerSmith and re-reading the guidelines to refocus on the style, I made some minor-ish to semi-major tweaks. I upped the pilsner malt mostly to get the ABV into the high 4% range, dropped the wheat and Munich a touch, and dropped the Crystal 60L even further, barely above the 1% minimum required for the competition. For hops I swapped out Northdown for Northern Brewer, staggered the additions more, and paired up the hops both for FWH and at the 5 minute addition to get both hops contributing flavor, bitterness, and aroma. I decided to read up on more yeasts to see if something piqued my interest. Upon seeing California Ale V yeast, it looked to be a perfect yeast for a blonde…it supposed to give a nice soft maltiness with a slight sweet finish, lots of body, and a touch of fruitiness. The fruitiness should play well with the late addition of Challenger, and the increase in IBUs to the edge of the style limits should help tame the slight sweet finish a bit, so I had a recipe for a Blonde Al…looks at the Crystal 60L in the recipe…so I had a recipe for a Blondish Ale all ready to brew.

Finalized recipe for 5.5 gallons of Blondish Ale:

• 7.5lbs German Pilsner
• 12oz Flaked Wheat
• 10oz Munich - light
• 2oz Crystal 60L

Mash at 150 and boil for 90 minutes

Boil Additions:

• 0.25oz each Challenger and Northern Brewer FWH @90 minutes
• 0.5oz Northern Brewer @30 minutes
• 0.5oz each Challenger and Northern Brewer @5 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• White Labs WLP051 – California Ale V Yeast 
• Ferment at 65F for a week, then raise to 70F for a week

This beer is the first beer I’m brewing in the great state of Massachusetts using my very own well water that has no chlorine or chloramines to worry about and has a great balance of sulfates, carbonate, magnesium, calcium, and chloride. It’s the 2nd best drinking water I’ve ever had on tap next to the water I grew up with, but that may just be nostalgia talking. I made very small additions of CaCl2 and gypsum to the mash water, and then added a touch of baking soda into the boil kettle when I started draining the wort. I measured out 10.5 gallons of water for brew day straight from my tap (no driving to get RO water, no letting it sit, no campden tablets, it was glorious), and started heating up my strike water so I could mash in at 150F for 1 hour. I hit my target temp spot on, which is nice, and 15 minutes before the mash was done; I heated the rest of the strike water to boiling so I could raise the mash up to 168F for mashout. After stirring in the water and letting sit for 5 min, I vorlaufed a bit and began collecting wort. I added the rest of my water that had cooled down to 170F, repeated the vorlauf and collected the rest of my runnings.

The hops were added as directed above, and I followed the gravity along the way to make sure my boil off rate was good. I’ve actually found this to be very useful, taking refractometer readings every 10-15 minutes to make sure my boil rate isn’t too fast or slow. It’s a neat little QC measure that’s become routine now. Plus it’s much more humid in MA than CA, so I didn’t know how that would affect my normal rate, and this little measure helped me make sure everything went smoothly. I ended up hitting my OG spot on, well 1.046 instead of 1.045 but who’s counting, and started to chill. Now, in San Diego, in the middle of August, tap water runs in the mid 70s for temperature, but here, with a fairly deep well, my groundwater is at around 58F during the hottest part of the year! That’s two amazing bonuses for having my own well. I cooled the wort down to the low 70s in no time and placed it in my fermentation chamber to get it down to 65F, at which point I pitched my 500ml yeast starter I got going 24 hours earlier. After a few hours there was already visible activity, so I sat back and waited 2 weeks before checking out what I had made.

After checking FG (1.009, which was what I was hoping for) I kegged it, carbed it, chilled it, and drank it. My first official brew in Massachusetts using house water was done and, I must say, I was impressed. It’s very lagerish (thanks to the pilsner malt) with a subtle sweetness and a hops crispness that becomes more and more evident as the beer warms. This is something I can share with anyone that likes beer, from macro beers drinkers all the way to the most esoteric nanobrew snobs, and they’d enjoy it. I’m starting to feel pretty confident about my chances for this competition now with 2 really solid beers ready to bottle and ship.

Final Numbers on my Blondish Ale:

• Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.046
• Final Gravity: 1.009
• ABV: 4.9%
• IBU: 34

The first series of beers I'll talk about here are all for a national competition called the BrewUnited Challenge. The crux of the challenge that there are only 4 grains and 6 hops you can use. Each recipe must contain all 4 grains and only 2 of the 6 hops. There are three categories Malty, Balanced, and Hoppy, all with a handful of specific styles within each category. For the competition, I decided to brew a traditional bock, a blonde ale, and an amber ale. Judging by the title of the blog post, you probably guessed that this post will deal with my take on the traditional bock using the constraints of the competition and you'd be 100% right.

After a quick perusal of the Traditional Bock style guidelines, I came up with the following recipe for a 5.5 gallon batch of beer:

• 8 lbs Munich - Light
• 3 lbs German Pilsner
• 1 lb Crystal 60L
• 1 lb flaked wheat (toasted on a baking sheet at 300F until golden)

Mash low at 143F

Boil for 3 hours to build flavor and color

Boil Additions:

• 0.25oz Perle and Challenger hops @60 minutes
• Irish Moss @15 minutes
• 0.25oz Perle and Challenger hops @15 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• Saflager 34/70 dry lager yeast
• Ferment using Brulosopher’s quick lager method

I can never let a recipe go unaltered for too long, so I looked at some more recipes and let my initial take simmer in my mind for a bit. My first concern was using 1 full pound of Crystal 60L. At ~7.5% of the total grist, it seemed excessive to me, even though many recipes had that much (or more) of similar specialty grains, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger. I was worried about a cloying caramel sweetness that would over power the rich deep malt backbone from the Munich and Pilsner, especially since this is a low hopped beer, there would be not a lot of bitterness to cut through the sweetness. I then dropped the wheat because I didn’t want to fight haze with all the starches from the wheat and hoped that 4oz (just under 2%) of well toasted flaked wheat would add a bit of oomph to the beer, strangely, the color of the wheat didn’t change all that dramatically, but the smell and taste sure did. I bumped up the Munich and Pils to get the gravity more in range stylistically according to BeerSmith and increased the initial bittering charge of hops to again keep it more in style and to balance out the slight increase in gravity.

I then started to question the mash temperature and technique. I went back and forth quite a bit about doing decoctions versus step infusions, and couldn’t really decide what to do, so I ended up doing both. In the end I felt that doing step infusions to hit my main temps would be fine and then I would do a single decoction with a large portion of the grains to hit my final temp for the mashout. This was done both to darken the color of the beer to style guidelines and also to push melanoidin production that would give it more traditional flavor.

So after all that fussing, my final recipe for 5.5 gallons was:

• 10 lbs Munich - Light
• 3.5 lbs German Pilsner
• 4oz Crystal 60L
• 4oz Flaked Wheat (toasted 1.5hr at 300F)

Infusion step mash:

• 125F protein rest for 15 minutes
• Add boiling water to the mash to heat to 148F, hold for 30 minutes
• Add boiling water to the mash to heat to 162F , hold for 30 minutes

Decoction Step:

• Pull out 3 gallons of thick mash after 162F rest (almost all grain, liquid barely above the settled grain bed in the pot) and boiled the grain portion for 20 minutes
• Add the boiled grains back to mash to heat up to 168F, let sit for 15 minutes, drain (add rest of grains if needed) and sparge with remaining water at 168F

Boil for 90 minutes

Boil Additions:

• 0.4oz each Perle and Challenger hops @60 minutes
• Irish Moss @15 minutes
• 0.25oz each Perle and Challenger hops @15 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

• 3 packets of Saflager 34/70 dry lager yeast
• Ferment using Brulosopher’s quick lager method

So I had the recipe locked down,  but I felt weird calling it a traditional bock because besides the recipe, my fermentation schedule was also a bit unorthodox, as you'll see below. So I decided to call it an unTraditional Bock. I brewed this beer in San Diego, and San Diego city water isn't the greatest for brewing straight from the tap, so for brew day, I picked up 12 gallons of reverse osmosis water (11 for mashing/boil, 1 for making a new batch of sanitizer). I treated the 11 gallons of water with 2 tsps each of gypsum and calcium chloride, heated up the strike water, and then doughed in for my protein rest. After the 15 minute protein rest, I added boiling water to get it up to 148F. 30 minutes later I added more boiling water to get it up to 162F (ended up at 160.5, but I didn't want to thin out the mash anymore, so I kept it at 160.5).

30 minutes later I was pulling off most of the grain to boil, I ended up taking a bit more than 3 gallons and boiled and stirred for 30 minutes. There definitely was decent color change, but adding it back to the mash didn’t seem to darken it up as much as I had hoped. I decided to call an audible after draining my mashtun and sparging with the remaining water and upped my boil time to 105 minutes in hopes of darkening the wort just a few more steps on the SRM scale, with the added bonus of potentially gaining more complexity to the wort.

After cooling down the wort to ~70F with the help of some ice, I filled my carboy and placed it in my fermentation chamber set at 50F for a few hours to cool completely down for pitching. I pitched 3 packets of rehydrated Saflager 34/70 yeast. After 7 days at 50F, I raised the temp by 5F per day until I got to 70F, there it sat for 5 days, then I dropped the temp to 32F in the chamber and let that sit for 4 days at 32F before racking into a CO2 purged keg.

Now here’s where things continue down the unTraditional path…I sealed the keg at 30PSI and the next day placed the keg delicately in the back of a semi trailer with all my worldly possessions where it spent 11 days slowly traversing the broiling desert Southwest, the uncomfortably hot Midwest, and why are you still so humid New England before reaching our new home. When the trailer arrived, I set up my kegerator and immediately got it cooling to serving temp and carbonating under CO2. I pulled the first pour, smelled it, and was extremely pleased; it was malty with a touch of sweetness (caramel raisin toffee goodness) and absolutely no hint of autolysis (I was most concerned about that, I had no idea how hot it would get in the back of the trailer). My first sip confirmed what my nose told me...no off flavors! Just a great backend sweetness that lingered for a bit that held up to the big malt presence. It was a little hazy, but as it’s been sitting and aging a bit, it’s getting clearer and clearer and the flavors are getting more rounded and pronounced. The hops may have been a little lost, yes it’s a malt forward beer, but it could have stood to be just a touch more bitter. The hop socks I’ve been using have probably cut down just a bit on utilization, so I should probably shoot for 10% more IBUs when designing recipes to get what I want. But all in all, it’s a fantastic beer and the more people I share it with, the more I feel like I have a winner.

This post was modified slightly and updated a bit from a piece I wrote for BrewUnited that can be found here.

Final Numbers on my unTraditional Bock:

• Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
• Original Gravity: 1.068
• Final Gravity: 1.017
• ABV: 6.7%
• IBU: 23.4

Greetings and salutations,

Wild Science Brewing Company is the homebrew moniker here at Eat Plants/Drink Beer. I started brewing beer back in Fall of 2013 and quickly became quite good at it. Here you will find recipes, tips, and tricks I've used to become an award winning homebrewer. I do a wide variety of beers, from simple, clean, light easy drinkers to deep, thick, luscious alcohol bombs all the way over to tart, sour, funky microbial experiments.

In the future I will talk more of my equipment, capacity, and techniques along with sharing recipes and results with you all in case you would like to brew the same beers that I am.

I hope you enjoy reading about my process and seeing my recipes.