The Mad Fermentationist - Homebrewing Blog

English Oatmeal Porter Recipe - Big and Small

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:41:00 +0000

Despite its rich brewing tradition, beers from England often seem to be overlooked with all of the frenzy surrounding Belgian and American breweries. Even German and Czech lagers seem to be regaining some cachet after the initial backlash against lagers. I think part of the problem is that some of England's best beer styles are low alcohol and best at their freshest (unlike many other beers that are shelf stable for at least a few months). Most of the American craft beer movement was built on English styles (adapted to American tastes and ingredients) IPAs, Brown Ales, Porters, and Imperial Stouts are all rooted in the British tradition. Maybe that is the problem, are we overly familiar with the flavors, always looking for what's next?

I have the same problem, while I love drinking a great mild or bitter when it is put in front of me, they aren’t the sort of beers that I tend to get really excited about. The ideal English session ale has a relatively simple flavor that doesn’t fatigue the palate (unlike my low-alcohol IPA). Brewers strive to use a light hand with assertive specialty malts and hops, letting the base malt and yeast strain play lead roles. I’m the sort of person who tends to order samples when I'm at a bar, and I almost never orders a second glass of the same beer (what’s next?).

However, there are some English breweries deviating from tradition and brewing really interesting beers. I think Thornbridge is producing some of the best beers of this young group. Jaipur IPA is crisp, minerally, and bright (on tap and the fresher the better), and unlike many other English "IPAs" it is not just a bitter. Thornbridge Bracia is an almost gruit-like imperial stout with peat smoked malt, chestnut honey, and licorice. I wish they were getting the sort of hype that BrewDog does because their beers are certainly better. Williams Brothers is also sending some interesting casks to America. I thoroughly enjoyed a glass of New Beginnings, which is a golden bitter lightly hopped with Amarillo Nelson Sauvin on cask.

To straddle the line between these two divergent English brewing identities, my friend Nate and I decided to employ a traditional English technique, parti-gyle mashing. I’ve mentioned it before, but parti-gyle simply refers to running off multiple beers from a single mash. In this case, the mash was composed of traditional enough ingredients: bready Maris Otter, light-coffee brown malt, slightly burnt chocolate malt, a variety of caramel toned crystal malts, and a healthy dose of chewy oats.

After conversion was complete, we took the bulk of the first runnings were used to produce an English-inspired beer Imperial Oatmeal Brown Porter (although I’m not sure an English brewery has ever brewed one). The second runnings (with a scoop of the first to boost the gravity ) were converted into a moderate gravity beer on the big side of Dark Mild at 4.5% ABV. Both worts were modestly bittered with hops, and then fermented with White Labs Yorkshire Square. Nate and I are planning to bottle in a few days so the batches are carbonated in time for a pre-trip to England party that he has been brewing for.

Chewy Brown Porters

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 21.50
Big OG: 1.078
Small OG: 1.045
SRM: 32.6
Big IBUs: 21.0
Small IBUs: 17.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 83% (total)
Wort Boil Time: 105 minutes

Grain
------
69.8% - 15.00 lbs. Maris Otter
9.3% - 2.00 lbs. Brown Malt
9.3% - 2.00 lbs. Quick Oats
4.7% - 1.00 lbs. Crystal 80L
4.7% - 1.00 lbs. CaraMunich Malt
2.3% - 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt

Hops
------
Big: 1.25 oz. Styrian Goldings (Pellet, 5.00% AA) @ 75 min.
Small .75 oz Crystal (Whole, 6.00% AA) @ 60 min

Extras
-------
.5 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
.5 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
-----
White Labs WLP037 Yorkshire Square Ale

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
---------------
Sacch Rest I - 60 min @ 154 F
Sacch Rest II - 15 min @ 160 F

Notes
------
Brewed 1/28/12 with Nate

Quick oats from Whole Foods. Two kinds of brown malt, 1.5 lbs were the darker variety.

Filtered DC water, no adjustments.

7.25 gallons of first runnings @ 1.066

Sparged with 7 gallons of 170 F water, collected the same back @1.030

Took 3 qrts of the first runnings a put them into the second runnings, 2 qrts back the other way.

Boiled first runnings for 30 min, then added 1.25 oz of Styrian Golding pellets.

Small beer got .75 oz of Crystal @ 6% AA @ 60 min for ~18 IBUs.

Chilled both beers to ~67 F, strained, shook to aerate. Yeast cake from 3.5% Vienna IPA thing. 4 oz for the big half, 3 oz for the small half.

Homebrew Blogging Tips - SotB 2012

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:01:00 +0000

Rather than summarize the statistics of my fifth year of blogging for the annual State of the Blog post as I did in previous years, I decided to take the opportunity to summarize what I've learned from blogging. Over the years, I have received probably a dozen emails from new homebrewing bloggers seeking advice. This post is how I should have answered those requests if I'd had the effort at the time. The same sort of suggestions would help anyone starting a blog about a hobby or craft. I also hope that even if you don't blog that you might be interested in what goes on behind the scenes.

Having unique, high quality, content is the most important thing to focus on. This is easier to do if you write about something you have a passion for. Try to narrow your focus to find a niche or a niche within a niche that appeals to you. Be honest, don't try to cover up mistakes; posting flaws and accidents builds trust with the readers, if your batch sucks let people know so they can avoid the same mistakes. This is especially important with brewing because I often post a recipe before the beer is ready to sample. Don't try to sound like an expert on subjects where you are not, if you say something stupid in an authoritative way about one thing it undermines your credibility on other topics.

Almost as important as what you write about is how you write. It doesn't need to be perfect, but at least reread and spell check before you post. I find my results are best when I can wait a day or two between writing and editing. I usually draft in Microsoft Word, but had formatting issues when pasting from there into Blogger's Compose mode. I now work around the problem by pasting into the HTML mode and using Compose to format the post.

Try to build credibility in your chosen field. One of the biggest issues with blogs is that anyone can start one. You need to find ways to prove to readers that you are a trustworthy source of information: awards, endorsements, professional credentials, whatever. In my case appearing on podcasts, having a sour beer advance to the second round at NHC, and working with professional brewers all helped me build a level of respectability (I hope). It also feeds back on itself, the blog got me a gig writing articles for BYO Magazine, and that in turn raises the credibility of the blog (this year I'll be writing on spontaneous fermentation, dark lagers, designing recipes, and fermented foods for BYO).

You don't need to post every single day (especially if you don't have something interesting to say), but if someone comes back to the blog a few times in a row without seeing an update they may stop checking. For me it has really helped to set a schedule for posting. I try to have a big post every Monday (a recipe, technique, travel), and something small later in the week (like a tasting, or poll results). It can be discouraging to keep posting when no one seems to be visiting at first, but keeping it up is key.

Try to make your blog appear at least marginally unique, professional, and easy to navigate. Try to avoid a background that is too clunky or distracting. Use tags, text links, and static pages to draw people back to related posts. It is hard to get people to visit your blog for the first time, so try to get those who do to stick around. People love photos especially when we are reading about eating and drinking; you don't need a DSLR and a high end lens, but try to take clear pictures (with a cheap camera good lighting and a free image editing software like Gimp are your best friends).

Don't cram your site with intrusive ads, your main goal early on should be to build a readership, not make a few dollars. The pace this blog has grown at means that each year I get about as many visitors as I did for the entire history of the blog before that point (this January the blog topped 100,000 page views in a month for the first time). If you have a niche try to get targeted relevant ads, I never had good luck with Google AdWords (they seem better for a general site with hoards of visitors).

Put up an email address (although probably not your personal email) and respond to questions as quickly as you can. Same goes for answering comments on the blog. Interacting with people directly is a great way to build a more enthusiastic following. The number of people who have emailed me for advice, and subsequently sent me beer, microbes, or other stuff has been amazing. Direct interaction on Twitter and Facebook is gaining importance, although I have not seen the sort of traffic that some other sites report. Despite having only half as many Facebook "Likes" as Twitter Followers similar posts get more interaction and traffic from Facebook. Facebook uses an algorithm that give priority to posts they think you'll enjoy, while Twitter relies solely on chronology. Twitter has a huge number of users who post with great frequency so it can be difficult to reach people without being a frequent tweeter.

Posting on relevant forums and message boards is helpful as well, but don't solely post links to your blog (try to be part of the community). Social media aggregator sites like Reddit's r/Homebrewing and StumbleUpon have also sent a lot of new visitors my way, but the amount who who click a link and explore passed the linked page is pretty low (20% for StumbleUpon, and 30% for Reddit) compared to users who come through search (35%) or message boards (~40%). As much as all of these referrals are important they account for less than 30% of the traffic on my blog.

Optimize your posts to increase search traffic. The page's web address is a big factor in whether it is listed on the first page of the search engine's results. You have to strike a balance between eye catching to a human and full of key words for a computer (your website name is even more important). Speaking of website names, buy a "real" domain name rather than using the free .blogspot, it's just $10 a year through Google. Recently I became the proud owner of the address I originally wanted, MadFermentationist.com (a gift from a reader, it just links back to the blog, I don't think I'll go through the effort of moving the blog).

Adding html tags like a Meta Description, and Meta Keywords, can help (although from what I understand search engines no longer give them much weight). Similarly you can submit your site to DMOZ, but in my case I did this six months ago and it has not been listed in their directory of homebrewing sites yet. Add title and alt tags to your images to allow search engines to know what is in the picture to list it appropriately (you can hover your mouse over an image and see what they say). Recently I also added a little piece of code that makes search engines display the title of a post first rather than the blog name, making it clearer what the page is. Google Webmaster Tools allows you to remove any sitelinks (that display below your main link) that you feel are unnecessary, I've removed all of the Monthly archive pages for example.

Keep an eye on the traffic (I use Google Analytics), but don't get obsessed with the numbers of visitors. It is interesting to see who is linking to your site, consider linking back if it seems like a worthwhile site. Links drive traffic directly, but also are one of the major things search engines use to assign importance to a site. I have never emailed people requesting that they link to me, although I have reciprocated when people linking to me have asked (but only when I visit their site regularly). Try to post deeper links as well, not just to the homepage, but to a specific post that is relevant (having related words as the text of the link makes it even more valuable). Watch out for sites willing to pay for links, linking to them can cause search engines may to put you in a "bad neighborhood" which can hurt your site ranking.

Work on the technical stuff as much as you can, but time spent on the content is more valuable. When you do make changes view your blog from a couple different computers/browsers to make sure it displays properly on all of them. I've been lucky enough to have a couple people lend their eye for design and technical know how to help me improve the layout of the blog.

I hope at least a few people found that interesting. Any tips from other bloggers on things I missed?

Most Important Brewing Investments?

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:45:00 +0000

Fermentation Temp Control - 53%
Large Boil Kettle - 49%
Wort Chiller - 44%
Mash Tun - 37%
Outdoor Burner - 21%
Kegging System - 16%
Grain Mill - 14%
Oxygenation System - 8%
Stir Plate - 8%
Water Filtration - 5%
Wort Pump - 1%
Other - 0%
Beer Filter - 0%

(The vote was for brewer's top three choices, which is why they don't add up to 100%)

There are two main areas that a homebrewer can invest in to improve their beers: wort production gear, and equipment that improves fermentation. In my experience investments on the fermentation side is more important for brewing better beer, although it isn’t nearly as fun. Not many people get as excited about a constant fermentation temperature, or correct pitching rates, or ideal oxygen levels as they do about switching from extract to all-grain. However, I’d rather have a properly fermented extract beer no question over a poorly fermented all-grain batch.

I think the results give a pretty good path for a beginning homebrewer. I agree that gaining the ability to control your fermentation temperatures is the most important upgrade that any brewer can make. Not only does it enables complete dial in the temperature that suits a particular yeast strain but also provides the ability to lager and cold crash. Even if you don’t want to spend the money to have a dedicated refrigerator, a more hands on solution involving adding ice to a cooler or water batch can be a big help. Often overlooked, in cold climates having a method to raise the temperature of fermentation can be almost as important (especially for those of us whose basements are ~55 F at the moment). Either way it frees you from having the seasons dictate your brewing schedule.

I believe all-grain is the second most important investment a brewer can make, giving you a wider range of ingredients and a better ability to control the wort production. However, to take advantage of a mash tun you really need the ability to do full-boils (which requires a large boil kettle, and depending on your stove may also call for an outdoor burner) and cool all of that wort quickly (with a wort chiller). Don’t look at a full boil as an improvement that must be made simultaneously with going all-grain, a full boil and quick cool can really benefit the character of extract beers as well.

Much of the rest of the equipment on the list is really optional: a grain mill, oxygenation system, wort pump, kegging system, or beer filter can all improve your results, but mostly they are about saving time, effort, or money. I’ve been really happy with my newest investment, a stir plate and 2 L Erlenmeyer flask, for making starters (boil and cool directly in the flask, and the continuous stirring makes for a much denser yeast culture).

Out of all the results the only one that really surprised me was how low water filtration was; one of the most common off-flavors I taste at homebrewing club meetings is chlorophenols, usually the result of chlorinated brewing water. Given the relatively low cost of a carbon water filter, it might actually be the first suggestion I’d give to a new homebrewer. I’m not sure water filtration scored so low because it is under appreciated, or if it falls into the “optional” category since it only saves the time and money of buying chlorine free bottled water.

The longer I brew the more I am convinced that technique and process are far more important than recipe when it comes to making great beer. The ability some home and craft brewers have to make a range of delicious beers is more about how they brew than what they brew. Of course specific styles take distinct methods, and making a truly world class beer takes a higher level of recipe development, but that isn’t possible without solid fundamental wort production, fermentation, and packaging technique.

As always, I’m interested to hear what the five people who picked “Other” wanted to see? Conical fermentor? Hop back? Randall?

Vienna Malt Session IPA Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:02:00 +0000

I think beer is trying too hard to be wine. There is too much hype surrounding high alcohol, expensive, limited release, barrel aged beers with flavor profiles that demand splitting a 12 oz bottle three ways. Of beer is every bit as capable as wine at excelling at that game, but where beer has traditionally dominated wine is the combination of big flavor and high drinkability. I'm not calling for all session ales, but I think there is a lot to be said for a beer that I can drink a pint of while I'm cooking dinner and not burn the French toast.

The only way to get a low alcohol wine is to water the grape juice down, but beer recipes can be adjusted to compensate for a more meager alcohol content. If you want an IPA with half of the standard alcohol content it is not as simple as cutting in half each malt and hop addition. I brewed a ~2% ABV Micro-IPA from the second runnings of a hoppy wheat beer a few months ago, and while it had the aromatic hop character I wanted it was severely lacking in malt backbone. Reducing the amount of malt can also result in a thin body, and the lower sweetness can lead to an unbalanced flavor. A few ideas to combat those pitfalls:

Boosting Perceived Body:
1. Add more crystal/dextrin malt, which will add sweetness and mouthfeel.
2. Add unmalted grains (especially oats and rye) for their beta-glucans, which add body without sweetness, but can also contribute haze.
3. Raise the saccharification rest temperature, a good choice to avoid the sweetness of crystal malts.
4. Use a less attenuative yeast strain, English strains are especially well suited.
5. Use a strain that produce a high amount of glycerin/glycerol, saison strains tend to excel at this.
6. Lower carbonation, I find high carbonation makes light beers taste seltzer-like (although higher carbonation can help is excessively thin beers like gueuze).

Enhancing Malt Flavor:
1. Use a more flavorful base malt like maris otter, Vienna, Munich, or dark wheat.
2. Raise the percentage of specialty malts, especially toasty malts like Victory, biscuit, and melanoidin.
3. Eliminate adjuncts like corn/table sugar, and corn which dilute malt flavor.
4. Conduct a no-sparge mash to increase color/flavor, and minimize tannin extraction.

Maintaining Balance:
1. For a hoppy beer reduce the IBUs proportionally to the expected residual extract (I think this is a better way to think about balance than the classic BU:GU ratio).
2. Do not trim late boil additions as much to maintain a solid hop aroma.
3. For dark beers consider increasing the percentage, but cold steeping your roasted grains to reduce harshness.
4. Use a more expressive yeast because the lower gravity will result in a cleaner fermentation profile.
5. Account for serving the beer fresher than you would a strong beer (e.g., use a highly flocculent yeast).

These are certainly not all things that should be done concurrently for one batch of session beer, but it is a good idea to pick the ones that make sense for the type of beer you are brewing. For this batch I switched out most of the bland American pale I would usually use in an IPA for toastier Vienna malt. I also opted for a hotter mash and no-sparged to boost the body and malt flavor. I selected a low attenuating English yeast to replace the default Chico strain, to add both body and additional flavor.

For hopping I went with one of my favorite combinations - Amarillo/Simcoe/Columbus (which I last used in my favorite IPA recipe); I love the bit of extra dankness that Columbus adds to the otherwise fruity duo. I used only late "hop bursting" additions to help increase the hop aroma without overdoing the bitterness. I also tried a new technique called "hop standing" which means waiting for 30 minutes or longer after the flame-out hops are added before chilling. This technique was proposed by Ray Daniels, as a way to better replicate the whirlpool additions that breweries use, which often sits in the hot wort for a substantial amount of time before chilling. This goes against the homebrew mantra (Jamil's article on late hopping) to cool as quickly as possible after adding the final dose of hope, so to cover all of my bases I added a second dose of hops as I started the chiller.

Session Vienna "IPA"

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.00
Anticipated OG: 1.038
Anticipated SRM: 5.6
Anticipated IBU: 37.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 54 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain
-------
72.5% - 7.25 lbs. German Vienna Malt
22.5% - 2.25 lbs. American Pale Malt
5.0% - 0.50 lbs. CaraVienna

Hops
-------
0.50 oz. Simcoe (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ 15 min.
0.25 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ 15 min.
0.75 oz. Amarillo (Pellet, 10.00% AA) @ 10 min.
0.75 oz. Simcoe Pellet (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ 5 min.
1.50 oz. Amarillo (Pellet, 10.00% AA) @ 0 min.
1.50 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ 0 min.
1.50 oz. Simcoe (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ 0 min.
1.25 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 11.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.25 oz. Columbus (Whole, 11.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.25 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
--------
0.50 Unit Whirlfloc @ 12 min.
0.40 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 12 min.

Yeast
------
White Labs WLP037 Yorkshire Square Ale

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Washington DC cut 50% with distilled, plus 2 g CaCl and 1 g gypsum

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest 40 min @ 153

Notes
-----
1/10/12 Starter made with .75 L, first time using the stir plate.

Cut with 50% gallons of distilled water to lower carbonate. Added 2 g of CaCl to the mash since I was short on gypsum.

Valley Malting Pale.

No Sparge, filled up the 5 gallon mash tun to the brim. Collected 3.5 gallons of first runnings @ 1.060. Diluted with 3.25 gallons of the diluted DC Tap water and 1 g of gypsum.

Added 1 oz of each hop and let sit for 25 min, then chilled with the addition of an additional .5 oz of each.

Chilled to 68 F, strained, and pitched the slightly decanted starter (finished quickly and flocc'd hard). Left at 64 F ambient to ferment

Good fermentation by 12 hours. Gave periodic twists to help with the high flocculating yeast.

1/20/12 Racked to a double purged keg with the bagged dry hops. Pretty full fill on the keg. Hit with ~30 PSI and shook twice to get a jump on the carbonation. Left in the basement at ~45 F to dry hop and drop clear. Down to 1.010, tasted a bit more bitter than I expected, but cold and time should help that.

Buckwheat Amber Sour Ale Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:56:00 +0000

This post marks the first in a series of tasting of the beers I (with the help of a couple friends) spent a day bottling a couple months ago, four base beers and four blends. When I brewed this sour amber ale I was hoping it would answer a couple questions I had. First, I wanted to see how well the Jolly Pumpkin souring method would transfer to homebrewing - a relatively cool saccharification rest (149 F in this case), short aging (still less than a year old), and the wild Michigan microbes harvested from a few of their beers. Second, I wanted to see what sort of flavors a couple pounds of buckwheat would contribute, both the grain itself and any esters the Brett was able to produce from its fatty acids.

My three-year-old Cannon digital camera died (camera lens failure...) about 30 seconds after snapping the pictures for this tasting. As a result, this tasting series will be on hiatus for the next couple weeks until I have the chance to research and buy a new camera.

Buckwheat Sour Amber Ale

Appearance – Clear leathery brown body with a thick slightly off-white head suspended on top. The head recedes over a couple minutes leaving a nice sheet of lacing along the sides of the wine glass.

Smell – The nose is a mix of toasty, almost roasty, malt and Brett aromatics. The Brett leans more towards fruity than funky and gives that really distinct Jolly Pumpkin aroma to the beer. There is some tobacco and loam aromas as well, surprised at the range of aromas in such a young sour beer.

Taste – The sourness is slightly puckering, bright and lemony. The finish is crisp and clean, surprisingly subdued compared to the aroma. It has a surprising amount in common with several of the darker Jolly Pumpkin beers, especially Fuego del Otono. There is some toasty oak character as a secondary flavor. Could certainly use another six months in the bottle for the flavor to catchup with the aroma.

Mouthfeel – Smooth mouthfeel, although it seems like most of the boost from the buckwheat is gone. Not overly dry or tannic. Solid carbonation, but not too much for a dark beer.

Drinkability & Notes – Solid balance, one of those sour beers that I can really drink in quantity. In terms of what I set out to do, it is a successful demonstration of techniques from Jolly Pumpkin, but sadly I don't get much of the tropical character I was hoping for from the buckwheat.

Souring a Beer with Acid Malt - Ithaca Brute Style

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:44:00 +0000

It is hard not to get embedded in a rut when you really get into brewing sour beers. The investments of time and effort are so big that it discourages major risk taking (just take a look at all of the lambic brewers who essentially brew only one beer!). While I'm confident enough to adjust the grain bill, or add interesting new ingredients, my basic method hasn't changed much since I stared to be happy with the results a few years ago. As I hinted at in my Great Souring Experiment post, I’d like to try mimicking the methods that several respected craft breweries are using. I doubt all of these batches will be as good as my default, but maybe I will find a way to make sour beers that is faster, more reliable, or produces a unique flavor.

My first attempt at a new method was to use the one that head brewer Jeff O'Neil developed while at Ithaca Beer Company to produce the pale sour Brute. He has since moved on to Peekskill Brewing, which sounds like it will allow more freedom for him to experiment. The basic idea of the method is to use a significant proportion of acid malt in the mash, a hot saccharification rest, and a clean primary fermentation with only Brett pitched into secondary. The combination of mashing at both a low pH and high temperature creates a largely unfermentable (to brewer's yeast) wort. Brute starts with a hot primary fermentation with their house English ale yeast and then crash cools when it reaches about 50% apparent attenuation. Oak spirals and Brett Drie are then added and allowed to age for close to a year.

I started the mash for my inspired by batch at 159 F and allowed it to convert before adding the acid malt. Ithaca does not wait to add the acid malt, but I was a bit worried about getting really terrible starch to sugar conversion. I initially added 1.5 lbs of the tangy sourdough-flavored acid malt from Weyermann. When this didn’t result in a pH as low as I expected I added another 1.5 lbs. Now at 20% acid malt, the mash made it down to a pH of 4.5. As pH is a logarithmic scale, the final pH of Brute ~3.7 would require more than six times as much acid to reach. On their website Weyermann suggests 8% acid malt to sour a quick Berliner weisse, but I don't see how this would work when 20% in this beer gave no noticeable acidity.

I'm interested to see how far the Brett will be able to lower the pH on its own, it is also possible that Brute had other microbes, which had not been pitched, at work in the dedicated tank. Jeff has also said that he felt that seasonal temperature swings were a big part of what made Brute work, so I'll be letting this batch sit outside of my temperature controlled basement "fermentation" room next summer... maybe.

I failed to take many pictures during the brew day, but the American University journalism project were around throughout the day snapping photos of ever step of the process.

Acid Malt Soured Saison

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.00
Anticipated OG: 1.069
Anticipated SRM: 4.1
Anticipated IBU: 10.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 67 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
-------
66.7% - 10.00 lbs. German Pilsener
20.0% - 3.00 lbs. Weyermann Sauer(acid) Malt
13.3% - 2.00 lbs. Wheat Malt

Hops
-------
0.50 oz. Hallertauer Tradition (Pellet, 6.00% AA) @ 60 min.

Yeast
-------
WYeast 3726 Farmhouse Ale

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
-----------------
Sacch Rest 45 min @ 159 F
Acid Malt Sacch 30 min @ 159 F

Notes
-------
Brewed 12/04/11 with my neighbor Josh and the American University journalism crew

Mashed 45 minutes before adding the 1.5 lbs of Weyermann acid malt, waited 15 minutes, and pH was still at 5.5, added 1.5 lbs more which took it down to 4.5. Not quite as sour as I wanted, but it should be interesting.

Double batch sparge. Ended up with a bit more gravity than I wanted. Pitched yeast cake from one carboy of the first refill of the apple brandy solera. Shook to aerate.

Fermentation was going strong after 12 hours at 64 ambient. After 24 hours total I added 1 gallon of distilled water to lower the gravity.

After 48 hours placed it in a pot on the radiator to get it up to ~82 F.

12/10/11 Racked to secondary, down to 1.015. Not much acidity, I may have to pitch more microbes that I was intending.

1/13/12 Added ECY Brett Blend #1 via dregs from my Brett'd Rye Saison.

Home Smoked Roggenbier Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:51:00 +0000

Rye is a weird grain. It has a flavor that some people call "spicy" but I've never thought it made a beer taste like it had been spiced (unless you also add caraway, like our Kvass). To me rye malt adds more of a rustic earthy grain flavor that is hard to articulate. On previous batches I'd stuck between 15-25% (in Denny's RIPA, and Brett'd Saison), but brewing with my friend Scott we went all the way up to 45% in our Cherry Wood Smoked Roggenbier. Brewing a collaborative recipe is a good way to try something out of your comfort zone, something you would not brew if the choice was entirely up to you. Sometimes it yields a beer you love (as it has on several previous batches with Scott), while other times it gives you a data point for future experiments.

Rauch Roggenbier

Appearance – Ruddy brown, with the rye adding a thick almost muddy haze despite several weeks of cold conditioning. Head pours a finger thick, but deflates rather quickly. Looks similar to a dunkle, but I would like it to be a bit lighter on the haze.

Smell – Some ctrusy hops, sweet cigarette smoke, sulfury yeast. Nice complex aroma, the smoke is lighter and melds better with the yeast and hops than other smoked malts I have used. It is a nice level of smoke for complexity, but some people might want more.

Taste – Firm bitterness, lingering smoke, maltiness, a bit muddled. The rye adds an indistinct earthy malt character that gets in the way of the other flavors. I think I would back down on the rye to 25% if I brewed it again (swapping in some wheat malt probably).

Mouthfeel – Creamier and almost syrupy compared to what I expect in a beer like this (the rye's beta glucans are to credit/blame). Solid carbonation, I'm sure purists would want it spritzy, but in a higher bitterness example like this I think too much carbonation would be grating.

Drinkability & Notes – Solid beer, but it just doesn't have the balance I want. Baking down on the rye, and upping the smoke slightly would be the way to go if I brewed it again. One of the problems with home-smoked malt is that inconsistency compared to commercially smoked versions, but the soft cherry wood smoke was the right choice by Scott for this beer.

As a side-note, this is my 500th post... yikes.

New Orleans, Better Beer Than You'd Think

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:18:00 +0000

There are a handful of American cities that are regarded as hubs for good beer: I'd put Portland, San Diego, and Philadelphia all in that first tier. These days there are plenty of other places that have a few cool breweries, or a bunch of good bars, but there are still a lot of cities that are not known for their beer scene at all. New Orleans was one of those cities in my mind, sure they have Abita (brewers of a number of most mediocre beers) nearby, but I think of it as a town whose drinking scene is centered around college students slamming florescent colored hurricanes and hand grenades. I was expecting great food, so if I wasn't able to get a decent beer I'd survive (see our trip to Spain).

Before Audrey and I flew down for the extra-long weekend over New Years, I did a bit of research. There were a few more places than I expected in the BeerAdvocate database, and got some good suggestions from replies on Facebook and Twitter. However it is always hard to tell just how good places are when there isn't a huge amount of competition.

We stayed near the French Quarter and Frenchmen Street at a small-cool-eclectic-odd bed and breakfast. The first day we walked around to get a feel for the neighborhood. The next day we took the St. Charles St. streetcar through the Garden District to Casamento's (delicious oyster loaf and stew, but painfully inattentive service).

After lunch we walked to NOLA Brewing, a smallish production brewery that opened a few years ago. We arrived in time for the weekly Friday tour. It turned out the tour consisted of drinking free beer and standing around the brewery. We only stuck around long enough to try one beer each before the line stretched out the door and around the corner, and we decided to move on. However, over our six days in town I got to try most of their beers with the Irish Channel Stout (more bitter and roasted than expected) being the winner.

From NOLA we headed to what I had been told was the best bottle shop in town, Stein's Market and Deli. Not a big place, but it was funny to see Cantillon and Fantôme in abundance, breweries that have become rare on the East Coast (and at prices I don't remember seeing in a couple years - $12.50 for Fantôme Saison?!). Other then a few local beers, they didn't carry much I can't find in DC besides a few Southern breweries like Sweetwater, St. Arnold, and Lazy Magnolia. Before we left we also grabbed a couple knishes and a pickle to snack on as we continued our walk.

With a few bottles in tow we continued east to The Avenue Pub, where we sat in their back courtyard. Another relatively new operation, it has a beer list that could stand up against many of the great beer bars in beer-cities. I had a glass of 3 Fonteinen Zwet.be (a funky porter) and Audrey had a glass of BFM Bon Chien (both were in good shape, although I was hoping for more sourness in the 3F). They had a number of local beers as well, but we figured we could find those at other bars or restaurants.

In general I was impressed that most places we went into had at least a couple local beers from places like Bayou Teche, Tin Roof, NOLA, and Abita. In particular we enjoyed d.b.a (live music and 30 taps), Green Goddess (brûléed, apple stuffed, French toast, and a smoked beer from Bayou Teche), Boucherie (best corned beef sandwich of my life, and a glass of Du Ciel Route Des Épices), and Cochon (braised pork cheeks, house cured meats and a Tin Roof Voodoo Bengal S.P.A). I think the single best thing we had to eat on the trip were the barbecued shrimp at Mr. B's Bistro, particularly the sauce which tasted like reduced shrimp stock, butter, and spices (the Abita Winter I had with it was the best beer I've had from them). I can't remember a single bad thing we ate on the entire trip, even the beignets at Cafe du Monde were excellent despite it being a tourist trap.

Taking a break from eating (not to mention museums, a swamp tour, and shopping) we headed to the Old New Orleans Rum distillery for a tour (luckily the $10 includes both a tour-guide and samples). The tour started out with a cocktail (a not-too-sweet tea with Cajun spiced rum), and then proceeded into the history of the distillery (founded in 1995) and of rum production in general. The molasses is mixed with water and then open-fermented in a large vat by a few pounds of yeast (the taste of the wash was a bit sour, but otherwise inoffensive - sanitation isn't that important when you are going to distill). Once fermentation is complete the distillation begins in a pot still and then proceeds to a column still (repossessed from a French perfume maker). The bulk of their rum is sold unaged, but some is aged in used bourbon barrels for three years (some of the barrels are subsequently sold to a brewery that uses them to age their smoked porter). At the end of the tour we got small samples of all four of their products (including the 10 year aged version, barrels of which survived hurricane Katrina up in the rafters, above the eight feet of flooding they experienced - see the color change in the wood above the fan?).

On our last night we met up with Sal, a homebrewer from across lake Pontchartrain who had emailed me a couple of time for advice. He suggested El Gato Negro for some fresh squeezed margaritas, which were excellent (I went with the pineapple-cilantro, Audrey had the satsuma). We talked about the beer scene and the local culture in general and swapped a couple homebrews. Sadly, I haven't had a chance to open either of the beers he gave me yet since I have been fighting off a cold for the last week. For the flight back I grabbed a muffaletta sandwich at Central Grocery (we'd tried to go around lunch on a previous day, but baulked at the line). Best dinner on a plane I've ever had.

Good beer, great food, fun trip. Not sure where we'll be headed next, but I need a trip to Belgium at some point (maybe a reward once the book is finally done...).

Favorite "Newish" American Hop?

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:07:00 +0000

Citra - 81%
Apollo - 4%
Calypso - 3%
El Dorado - 3%
Bravo - 2%
Legacy - 1%
Comet - 0% (3 votes)
Serebrianka - 0% (3 votes)
Sonnet Golding - 0% (1 vote)

Not a big surprise that Citra won by a landslide given it's the easiest to buy (and the most commonly used in commercial beers), but it was nice to see every hop get at least one vote. I’ve used Citra in a handful of beers and have been really pleased with the big bright orangy flavor it contributes. I am planning to dry hop the sour tripel (which never soured much) with a few ounces of it before bottling to give it some additional aromatic character.

I have not had a chance to brew with any of the other newly released varieties, but on an impulse I included one pound of Comet in an order I placed from Hopsdirect a couple months ago. My plan is to brew a beer with them to judge their contribution, and give away the rest if their flavor isn’t for me (not much of a loss for $9). I always like to use a hop by itself the first time to get a true sense of their bitterness/aroma, before trying to pair it with other varieties in subsequent batches.

In general it is great to see new varieties coming to market, especially ones that were selected for their interesting flavor rather than stratospheric alpha acid percentage (James Spencer had a great article in the October issue of BYO Magazine on the current wave of Aroma Hop Breeding). Just trying a new ingredient is part of what gets me excited about homebrewing, finding a new unique flavor, something that will surprise people is always a worthwhile goal for a batch. It will be interesting to see which varieties prove popular enough to continue being grown, and which fail to sell. I’m also wondering if any of the new varieties will reduce demand enough to kill production of any of the old standby varieties that are no longer seen as “exciting” to brew with.

If you have tried and enjoyed one of the less popular hops on the list, then please post a comment and let the rest of us know what the flavor was like, what sort of beer it would work in, and what other hops it might match well with.

American Farmhouse Currant Dark Saison

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:23:00 +0000

I like the idea of seasonal beers that are always similar, but never the same. For the last four falls a few friends and I have brewed dark funky saisons with dried fruit. Each year we keep the basic concept the same, but change the ingredients and methods to suit the dried fruit we select.

After previously using raisins, dates, and figs we decided that currants were the next logical choice. Dried currants have a flavor similar to raisins, but it is slightly more acidic with winey complexities. While there are "cassis" lambics flavored with fresh (or juiced) currants, I think the best example of their use is dried in Russian River's Consecration. Recently I went to a tasting at a friend's house where we opened five bottlings, and while each one was interesting in its own way the 001 had the perfect balance of acidity, Cabernet Sauvignon, tobacco, and dark fruit (too bad it was my last bottle).

For the malt bill of this year's dark saison we used a base of Vienna to give it more bready/toasty flavors than previous batches. Rather than getting all of the dark color from dehusked roasted malts in the mash, I made a cold extraction with roasted barley first processed in coffee grinder. I mixed a half pound with 20 ounces of water, although I probably would use a quart the next time. After sitting overnight at room temperature I strained it through a tea strainer (my initial attempt with a paper coffee filter quickly became clogged). We added the resulting 10 ounces of syrupy jet-black extract to the kettle at the start of the boil.

Fermentation was a mix of saison strains and Bretts. This was my first time using White Labs WLP670 American Farmhouse which includes a mutated version of Brett bruxellensis from The Lost Abbey. I missed the initial release last summer, but Brandon (who writes the excellent sour beer blog Embrace the Funk) was kind enough to send me a slurry he had saved (the strain will be available again as a year round release for 2012). Alex and I also pitched Wyeast Brett bruxellensis and Farmhouse Ale to complete the fermentation team. For once we did not add bacteria, so while this beer will be funky it will not have the sourness that the previous batches did.

For the first three dark saisons in this series we pureed the dried fruit and added it to the end of the boil, but this time Alex and I decided to wait until secondary to preserve more of its flavor. As these currants were coated in oil (from the feel of them) I gave them a quick rinse in Star-San followed by filtered water to remove the head destroying lipids.

For oak a fellow homebrewer (Tom, who also hooked me up with a bottle of Surly Five) sent me a few slices of an oak stave that had been in a red wine for some time. Even the smallest one, at 1.75 oz, was a bit more than I usually add, but since it had already had a good deal of its character extracted and had relatively low surface area I decided to risk over-oaking. I am also planning on adding some citrus zest when the beer is closer to bottling, but that will depend on the flavor.

We are starting to run out of dried fruits to use in dark saisons, so if anyone has a suggestion please post a comment. I think maybe even prunes would be a good choice...?

Dark Saison IV
Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 10.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 25.00
Anticipated OG: 1.067
Anticipated SRM: 29.3
Anticipated IBU: 22.4
Brewhouse Efficiency: 77 %
Wort Boil Time: 80 Minutes

Grain
-------
92.0% 23.00 lbs. Vienna Malt
2.0% 0.50 lbs. American Chocolate Malt
2.0% 0.50 lbs. Carafa Special II
2.0% 0.50 lbs. Special B Malt
2.0% 0.50 lbs. Roasted Barley

Hops
-------
0.75 oz. Warrior (Pellet, 16.00% AA) @ 75 min.

Yeast
-----
WYeast 3726 Farmhouse Ale
White Labs 670 American Farmhouse
Wyeast 5112 Brettanomyces bruxellensis

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
-----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 159 F

Notes
-----
Brewed 12/17/11 with Alex.

Used spring water for the mash and sparge.

One week earlier had made a cold extraction with the roasted barley and one pint of water. Filtered after 18 hours at room temperature, rinsed with a few more ounces, and saved in the fridge. Added to the start of the boil.

Chilled to 70 F. Aerated with ~45 seconds of pure O2. Pitched my five gallons with 375 ml of loose slurry from the acid malt saison, 75 ml of dense slurry from WLP670 American Farmhouse, and half a package of Wyeast Brett B.

Good fermentation by the next morning at 64 F ambient in a large bucket fermentor. Never produced much krausen. Left the lid on lightly to mimic the low pressure of open fermentation.

12/27/11 Racked to secondary with 27 oz of dried currants (first rinsed with Star-San and then filtered water) and a long chunk of oak from a wine stave (1.75 oz).

2/7/12 Already had enough oak character (tannins especially), racked off of currants and oak stave. It would have been nice to let the currants ferment longer, but at 6 weeks they should have given up most of their flavor.

Courage RIS Clone Tasting 2011

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:12:00 +0000

Over the Christmas weekend I had time for my annual tasting of the Courage Russian Imperial Stout clone that James and I brewed four and a half years ago. The timing couldn't have been better since a few days prior I got my first taste of the (newly re-resurrected) original which is now being brewed by Wells and Young. The commercial version did not have any Brett funk that mine does, but it did have a firm charcoal roasted bitterness from the heavy-handed use of black patent. It was interesting to taste a beer at such a young age that is built for aging (the bottle we had was brewed this summer).

It seems like so few of the American brewed Imperial Stouts are designed for graceful aging. The high level of sweetness in many examples (about 1.060 in the case of 3 Floyds Dark Lord) requires massive hopping to counter. The problem is that as the bitterness fades the beer loses that balance and ends up sugary sweet. Alternatively, some versions have gotten so strong that they need to age for a couple years before approaching drinkable. The bottle of The Bruery's 19% ABV Black Tuesday I had at the same tasting was so boozy that I couldn't taste anything else. Does anyone really want an aged beer that has alcohol of sugar as the primary flavor? I am not advocating 7% ABV Imperial stouts that finish at 1.005, but you are not going to get beer drinkers coming back to beers that are undrinkable in excess of 2 oz.

I'm hoping to pick up a few bottles of the Courage to store away for a few years to see if this newest incarnation has the agability of its predecessors. I may also have to rebrew my recipe without the Brett to see how close it is.

Courage RIS Clone

Appearance – Dark, dark, brown body. The dense tan foam floats well for a few minutes before falling, leaving only a thin wispy covering.

Smell – Has more of basement Brett funk than I remember in previous years, plenty of Bretty wet hay. Nice coffee roast character as well as dark fruit (prunes?). Still not showing its age negatively, although it is interesting that the funk seems to be increasing despite the lack of live Brett.

Taste – The flavor has less funk than the nose, with more cocoa and coffee. There is some vanillin oak as well. The bitterness (hop and roast) is mostly gone, leaving even a 1.020 beer sweetish, but the alcohol is still enough to balance.

Mouthfeel – More carbonation than I like in a big dark beer, but it is stable (at this point I don't think it will change). The body is moderate for an RIS, it is amazing how thick some of the American versions of the style are.

Drinkability & Notes – As always this beer is a nice Christmas treat when I visit my parents for the holidays. Almost halfway to my goal of hanging onto at least a few bottles for ten years, hopefully the beer continues to evolve and improve.

Valley Malt Dubbel Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:20:00 +0000

Dubbel is one of the few styles that it is hard to find a good American brewed version of. While the best Belgian examples (Westvleteren 8, St. Bernardus Pater 6, Westmalle Dubbel etc.) are malty without overwhelming sweetness, the Americans tend to either overdo the sweetness or underdo the malt. Brew Like a Monk reports that some Belgian dubbels get all of their color and dark fruit flavors from dark candi syrup, but I have not been happy with the results of leaving out the dark crystal malt.While dark candi sugar does add great flavor caramel and dark fruit flavors, it becomes richer and more complex when combined with complementary character from malt.

For this dubbel recipe I used American (pale and dark crystal) malts from Valley Malt to add their unique character. I also didn't want the beer to be too strong, starting at 1.058 it is a beer that I can drink a glass of and still write a blog post.

American Malt Dubbel

Appearance – Shoots out of the picnic tap with a voluminous off-white head. The body is dark brown, almost opaque in my St. Bernardus tulip (although it appears more reddish-brown towards the bottom of the glass, revealing a bit of haze). The head has great structure and leaves thick lacing.

Smell – Big spicy clove character from the cool fermentation with WLP545 takes the lead. There is toasted malt and some of those classic dark fruit and toffee flavors I expect in Belgian dubbels. Neither the dark crystal nor the candi syrup drowns out the other. The pale malt gives a backbone that I find lacking in the dubbels I've brewed with Pilsner malt as the base.

Taste – Nice balance of flavors, malty without being sweet. Just a slight bitterness to help counter the sweetness that does remain. The candi sugar adds come caramelized raisin type flavors with the dark crystal malt contributing plums and prunes. The yeast character is slightly stronger and spicier than I prefer; I'll probably go with my old standby WLP530/WY3787 next time I brew a similar recipe.

Mouthfeel – Despite the energetic pour the carbonation is about right (just below prickly). The body is medium-light, which is fine by me.

Drinkability & Notes – Really happy with the way this batch turned out. Excited to see how the half with bugs, plums, and oak does (especially after recently having a standout pale sour with homegrown plums – thanks Mike!).

If you are interested in brewing something similar, but don't have access to Valley Malt's products use the flavorful pale malt of your choice for the base and your favorite dark crystal malt (Special B, C120, or English Dark).

Website, Book, and Brewery Updates

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:18:00 +0000

Over the next few weeks my posts will be a bit sporadic as a result of a couple holiday trips. I’ll be visiting my parents in Massachusetts for Christmas, and then Audrey and I are heading down to New Orleans for some food, music, and fun (plus good beer if we can find it). So this post is just a couple of updates on various things I have going on.

A few weeks ago three journalism grad students from American University came over to interview me and record a brew day. Their project, a website about DC homebrewing, is up (looks pretty slick to me). The beer I brewed was based on the method Ithaca uses for Brute, relying on acid malt for sourness and a long secondary with Brett for complexity. I'll post the full post with all of the details next week, but take a look at the photos from the day in the “Process of Homebrewing” section on the site.

I’m still hammering away on the American sour beers book. Down to my last couple interviews to conduct, and I’m hoping to have a completed first draft by the end of January. The manuscript is already over 110,000 words (~240 single spaced pages), but it still needs loads of editing. I submitted a proposal to Brewers Publications a few weeks ago, but have not heard yea or nay from the publisher. I’m a bit torn. If they make an offer, and I go that direction, most likely the book would not be published until at least 2014 (self-publishing I’d hope to put it out in six months). I’d guess money would be similar either way (lower cut, but higher volume with a publisher). However, it would be nice to have backing from the AHA/BA and the beer nerd cred that would come along with it.

In other exciting news, I’m in preliminary talks to be a creative consultant for a production brewery that is looking to open in a year or so. Sorry to be completely vague on this one, but it sounds like a great opportunity. Much more information on that if it works out!

So lots of stuff going on, but no worries, after almost five years of blogging I have no intention of stopping.

Kate the Great Clone Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:16:00 +0000

Imperial Stout is one of the handful of styles that I love, but just can't seem to nail. I've made several ~B+ versions based on well regarded recipes, but none that stack up with the best commercial (or homebrew) examples. As a result, a few months ago I took a crack at the recipe for Kate the Great (one of my favorite commercial versions) that Todd Mott of Portsmouth Brewing gave out. This batch is pretty young, but I'd gotten several emails asking me how it was coming along...

Kate the Great Clone

Appearance – The viscous pitch-black liquid consumes my snifter. The dense/creamy tan head has outstanding retention and lacing. Really a picture perfect beer.

Smell – The nose is very closed (even after it warms), not nearly enough coffee/chocolate/roast for an RIS. There is some toastiness, a bit of dark fruit (port and raisin), but not much else. Hint of alcohol in the nose as it warms up to my (cool) room temperature.

Taste – Smooth flavor, with loads of port soaked dark fruit. Again just not enough of the roast or complexity I want. Some bitterness to counter the slightly sweet finish, giving it a balance reminiscent of good dark chocolate.

Mouthfeel – A bit over-carbonated at the pour, but a few swirls and it is down to the low level I like in my big dark beers. Great creamy body with a thick almost milkshake consistency.

Drinkability & Notes – Not unpleasant at all, and as an Imperial Porter it isn't bad, but the reliance primarily on Carafa Special III for color (not to mention only 6.5% dark grains) leaves it lacking the firm roast of a stout. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is in the results Portsmouth gets from this recipe, maybe a finer grind? Water chemistry? Scaling issues? Maybe just the slightly lower original gravity?

I am hoping a few months of cold conditioning in the fridge will help to clarify the flavors and bring out the roast. I'll be revisiting this one in a few months, I find it often takes a year for RIS to get to where I am happiest with them. As it stands, if I brewed this again I would probably go with at least 50% more of the dark grains (other than the Carafa) to get the flavor I am looking for.

Golden Solera: Blackberry, Acorn Squash, and Amarillo

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:37:00 +0000

I’ve been amazed at just how good the sour beers that have come out of our first three barrels have been. Without the advantage of blending multiple barrels it is fortunate that we have been consistently bottling great beers. We have bottled a total of five batches (not including variants on fruits or dry hops) with another three aging, and not a single clunker.

The solera apple brandy barrel was different from the start though. The barrel was already old when we got it (probably 20 years by my estimate), and displayed the scars of a hard life - a cracked stave and a bit of a vinegary smell. That combination of issues almost caused Nathan and I to search out a replacement barrel, but it held water and smelled alright after a Star-San rinse so we filled it. At eight months in oak the beer was already starting to show signs of going acectic/vinegary. At that point I was considering trying to talk Nathan into pulling the plug and starting over with a “fresh” barrel and beer. Luckily the acetic character calmed down once the ambient temperature dropped, and we decided to let it age a few more months.

At 11 months the beer was very dry (~1.002), oaky, and sharply acidic with a pH of 3.1. In an attempt to reduce the amount of acid production for the first refill we brewed and fermented the fresh beer a few weeks prior to pulling beer from the barrel to reduce the fermentable sugars. Using fermented beer rather than wort does not reduce Acetobacter's acetic acid production (which only requires alcohol and oxygen), but it will reduce lactic acid production. I also like this method because it keeps yeast from building up in the barrel which may eventually lead to autolysis.

With the fresh batch of beer finished fermenting, Nathan and I had to figure out what we wanted to do with the 20 gallons of beer that needed to be siphoned out to make room in the barrel. We left five gallons plain to give us a baseline for comparison of the other version. Despite being just under a year old (relatively young for a sour beer) we pitched rehydrated champagne yeast along with the priming sugar to ensure timely carbonation.

Bottling an amber sour in December, our first through was a fall theme. The night before I halved and roasted two acorn squashes, which weighed about two pounds each. While I love pumpkin, it really is not flavorful enough to come through in a complex beer without using a massive amount. Acorn squash has a distinct sweet/nutty flavor, but we wanted to complement that with warm spices. After talking to Pat Mcilhenney the owner and Brew Master of Alpine Brewing earlier in the week about their wine barrel aged Ichabod pumpkin ale (which includes canned pumpkin puree in the barrel in addition to whole roasted pumpkins in the mash) we took his advice and added cinnamon and nutmeg directly to the fermentor. The baseline for amounts was the two grams of cinnamon and one gram of freshly grated nutmeg I added to the boil for my butternut squash sour brown, but we wanted to make the spices more noticeable. Initially we planned on doubling the spices, but after Nathan weighed and added them to the fermentor seeing the amount gave us cold feet. Luckily spices float so by overfilling the carboy slightly I managed to flush out around half of the spices… I’ll still be tasting it this week.

We dry hopped five gallons with four ounces of Amarillo (about the amount I would use for a DIPA). I am hoping the bright citrusy hop aromatics will meld with the acidity as well as they did in my Amarillo/Simcoe/Cascade bottle hopped sour red. Dry hopped sours are a remarkable rarity given the popularity of both sour and big hop aroma beers, not to mention how many of the breweries that brew great sours also make standout IPAs (Russian River, Lost Abbey, Ithaca, Captain Lawrence, etc…). For the record, I did try to convince Pat to brew a dry hopped sour beer (given their amazingly aromatic hoppy beers), but he said they simply don't have the capacity to store more barrels at this point.

Fruit is always a fun addition (although I was hesitant because it increases acidity), so five gallons went onto six pounds of defrosted blackberries, plus a pound of mulberries. I like blackberries because they add a fruity/winey character that is not as aggressive as raspberries or cherries. This was my first time using mulberries (which are tart and earthy), but in the spring I am planning on harvesting enough from the tree in my backyard to add about two pounds of them per gallon to half of the DCambic.

With 20 gallons of beer removed from the barrel we began to refill it with the fresh beer. The gravity of the new beer was a bit lower than the initial fill, but since the original batches were pretty strong we decided it wasn’t worth screwing around with adding sugar or extract. We ended up with three gallons of extra beer that we’ll use for occasional top-offs to reduce the head space and in turn minimize the acetic acid production. We have not topped-off the other barrels, but for this one it seemed worth the extra effort.

Apple Brandy Refill

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 25.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 65.00
Anticipated OG: 1.055
Anticipated SRM: 10.7
Anticipated IBU: 13.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 57 %
Wort Boil Time: 70 Minutes

Grain
-----
55.4% - 36.00 lbs. German Pilsener
38.5% - 25.00 lbs. German Munich Malt
3.1% - 2.00 lbs. CaraMunich
3.1% - 2.00 lbs. Honey Malt

Hops
------
1.25 oz. Columbus (Whole, 15.00% AA) @ 60 min.

Extras
-------
2.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient @15 min.
2.00 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
-----
DCL Yeast T-58 SafBrew Specialty Ale

Water Profile
-------------

Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
---------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 152

Notes
------
1/13/11 with Nathan

Collected 14 gallons from the first runnings, split between two keggles. Sparged with 15 gallons of ~180 F water, stirred, and used to fill up both keggles. Hops were 2 years old, 15% AA adjusted down.

Ended up with much lower efficiency than I expected.

Chilled both halves to ~74 F. Split between 6 fermentors Aerated each with 30 seconds of pure O2. Pitched Wyeast Farmhouse Ale into 1 fermenter, a total of 3 packs of rehydrated T-58 split between the rest.

12/4/11 Racked the Wyeast Farmhouse carboy into several of the others to harvest the yeast cake for the acid malt soured beer.

12/11/11 Racked into the barrel, three gallons leftover for topping off.

ECY Brett Rye Saison Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:26:00 +0000

American saison has almost become a style in its own right. It shares many commonalities with the Belgian original, but the fermentation character tends to be cleaner and less idiosyncratic. There are certainly some oddball American versions, but few that have the more provincial and surprising flavors that Belgian brewers are known for. Visiting McKenzie's Brew House a year ago and sampling their Saison Vautour was a revelation for me in terms of American saison, that amazing combination of rye and funk with some other weird flavors that I couldn't place. Nathan and I just bottled our portion of the collaborative Irma Extra we brewed while visiting the brewery.

Inspired by head brewer Ryan and his assistant Gerard (who is about to open a new brewpub, Forest & Main, with several saisons planned) I brewed a rye saison with my friend Nate. We used the simple grist of 75% Pils and 25% rye malt, fermented with yeast and Brett from East Coast Yeast (as always Al's bug did not let me down). If you can't get your hands on ECY cultures, brew it anyway with the saison strain of your choice (McKenzie's uses White Labs Saison II) and Brett from a lab or harvested from bottle dregs.

Brett Rye Saison

Appearance – Brilliant burnt gold (love how Brett and time can clear a beer). Plenty of apparent carbonation streaming through, keeping the tight white head stay aloft. The rye really helped with lacing, what a beautiful beer!

Smell – The aroma has a complex blend of cereal (from the rye and Brett) and complex fruit (pear and apple) and spicy (pepper and coriander) aromatics from the yeasts. I wouldn't call it funky, but rustic is certainly right.

Taste – The flavor is much more Brett forward than the nose, with hay, leather, and overripe fruit. A well balanced beer, with the bready rye adding substance to the body without making it sweet. Some of the spice from the primary fermentation is still there, but it isn't as powerful as it was in the nose. There is a lingering minerally bitterness from the combination of hops and Brett. Probably the most authentic (read Fantôme) tasting saison I have made, thanks in large part to the bugs.

Mouthfeel – Solid carbonation, but not enough to make it foamy or sharp. The rye adds substance to the body without making the beer sweet. One of the tidbits I picked up from talking to the geyser of brewing information that is Chad Yakobson was that many saison strains produce more glycerol (which improves mouthfeel) than other brewer's yeast strains, which makes them especially good to pair with Brett (which does not produce glycerol in a significant quantity).

Drinkability & Notes – Really pleased with the results of this batch. There is not much I would change if I brewed it again, except getting some of the gravity from sugar (as we originally planned) to leave less for the Brett (to shift the balance just slightly towards the primary yeast character and away from the Brett).

What is the most you have ever paid for a bottle of beer?

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:51:00 +0000

$10-$20 - 31%
$21-$30 - 30%
$31-$40 - 12%
$41-$60 - 10%
< $10 - 5%
$100+ - 5%
$61-$99 - 4%

I'd be interested to hear what people's most expensive bottle was (and was it worth it?). Mine was a ~$65 magnum of BFM Abbaye de Bon Chien Grand Cru, although considering they are now selling 375 ml bottles of it for ~$25 the price I paid was a steal.

It is great that despite the poor economy, consumers are rewarding breweries who are willing to brew batches that are less more interesting, experimental, and even a little weird. While as a homebrewer most of my costs are for ingredients, fuel, and equipment, these really aren't the driving forces for commercial breweries when it comes to the more interesting batches. Breweries tend to be more focused on the time beers take to ferment and age in the tanks. A strong beer that takes six weeks before packaging needs to make as much profit as three batches of a beer that take two weeks to ferment (to make economic sense).

Time is the biggest cost of sour and funky beer production, having the space in tanks or barrels to age them before packaging. However, there are a few breweries that are working hard to make interesting sour beers with aging times that are not that much longer than a standard batch of beer. Jolly Pumpkin leaves some of it beers in barrels for as little as two weeks for example. I talked to Chad Yakobson of Crooked Stave over the weekend, and he is doing a lot of interesting things with 100% Brett fermentations with his Wild Wild Brett series (can't wait to see what he does once he has his own space). If anyone hasn't seen it his presentation on Brett from the 2011 NHC it is well worth the hour (here are the slides, and the first of the videos).

We are still early stages of the adaptation of the classic European methods to suit modern breweries and American tastes. I think there are going to be some amazing beers coming out in the next few years as brewers continue to learn and increase production. Sadly, I think we will also be seeing more top-shelf beers regularly pushing into the price category previously reserved for fine wines. The same way the 3 Fonteinen is releasing the Armand’4 season gueuzes, I suspect that more brewers will take their best batches, blends, or barrels and give them limited release packaging and big price tags.

Brewing Better Beer: Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:29:00 +0000

Brewing Better Beer: Master Lessons for Advanced Homebrewers is book written by BJCP president, Grand Master V Judge, and three-time Ninkasi award winning homebrewer Gordon Strong. While reading his bio I was surprised to see that he lives in the same small Ohio town where my girlfriend Audrey grew up. It had been awhile since I read a brewing book that didn’t have a narrowly defined subject, so I was excited to pick up some general improvements to my process.

The concept behind Brewing Better Beer is an interesting one: the investigation of what separates the great brewers from those who simply understand the process. It does a good job of avoiding being bogged down by overly technical detail. It puts forth that at its heart homebrewing is a craft rather than an art or a science. Knowing the scientific underpinning of the process may inform your choices, and there is some artistry in recipe design and blending, but these are less essential than your ability to correctly complete the mundane tasks of mashing, sparging, yeast propagation, keeping oxygen out at packaging etc.

At a certain point after brewing seriously for a few years many homebrewers realize that there are no longer any obvious upgrades that their system requires. From that realization a driven brewer can focus on methodically refining their technique and recipes to produce consistently great results. This book also puts a focus on personal efficiency, avoiding extraneous steps to allow for quicker and less taxing brew days. Being able to brew great beer with minimal time and effort is the goal that most of us strive for.

Part homebrewing autobiography, Brewing Better Beer struggled to keep me interested. The author frequently poses questions for the reader to ask themselves about their own recipes, process, equipment, and technique. In some cases Gordon describes a particular situation and how he dealt with it, but generally does not dwell long. In the end most of these answers require personal investigation and thought (I assume most brewers like me evaluate the available options on their own). As a result, despite the 300+ pages, I didn’t come away with much advice that I’ve actually applied to my brewing.

It may be that I’ve already been brewing too long, already developing a method and system that work well for my needs. While its title suggests the book is for advanced brewers, it covers a number of things that are rather basic without interjecting any advanced information. For example information about how hops and malt are used, or options that I’d think most “advanced” homebrewers would be aware of (e.g. no-sparge brewing, all late hopping). I think this would be a better book if you are still trying to figure out what sort of system you want, or are thinking of doing a major overhaul.

There are a few really interesting sections, I especially enjoyed the passage on using spruce tips (something I’ll have to try next spring). I also found the section about his use of dark grains to be interesting (basically always using cold steeping or adding at the end of the mash to reduce harshness). I would have liked to see more information like this presented in other parts of the book that went into detail on the benefits of a particular method or ingredient.

One of the chapters focuses on the importance of BJCP styles, which I could have done without. Gordon uses the styles to define both brewing to style, and brewing off-style beers. He talks about the area between the “style space” of two beers as the place to create new styles. For example, the space between robust porter and IPA yielded black IPAs, or between Belgian tripel and IPA for Belgian IPAs. To me the best new beers come out of the ether outside the guidelines, drawing ingredients and techniques from different traditions and combining them into unique creations (or using new ingredients for the first time).

I strongly disagree with his suggestion that all beers with yeast/spice/fruit character do not meld well with hops (he points to hefe, wit, and lambic in particular). There are a number of great beers that combine hop aromatics with fruity characters (see New Glarus Crack's Wheat, Mikkeller Not Just Another Wit, Cantillon Iris, and Cigar City Mango IPA).

The book only includes a few recipes scattered through the text, mostly to illustrate specific points. I was surprised how complex Gordon’s recipes were, mostly featuring six or more malts. I tend to strive for simplicity, but it is interesting to see the intricate formulations of his award winning beers.

Michael Ferguson in the forward, and the author in the text both compare the book to Zen and the Art of Motorcycles Maintenance, a lofty comparison which Brewing Better Beer fails to live up to. I think this one would be a good book to borrow from a friend or the library because it is not one I have found myself going back to reference. It is great to see Brewers Publication putting out more advanced homebrewing books since it seems like the “intro to” market is pretty well saturated.

Galaxy Double Australian Pale Ale Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:25:00 +0000

With two kegs waiting for an opening in the kegerator I’m happy to have my whole family in town for Thanksgiving (my first time running the show). While I’ve been loving the Riwaka Hefe Weizen the Galaxy DIPA has been drinking a bit slower. The flavor is great, but there is only so much 8.8% ABV beer I want to drink. Especially the presence of my father, who managed to kill a case of my first double IPA that I left at home when I moved down to DC, for the week is much appreciated!

In doing some research trying to figure out who was the first American craft brewer to release a sour beer (Cottonwood in 1995 is the current leader), I stumbled upon this quote on Beer Connoisseur: "In Booth II-14, Vinnie Cilurzo served the first commercial “Double IPA” anybody ever heard of. He brewed the beer in June of 1994, his first batch at Blind Pig Brewing in Temecula, Calif. He aged it on oak for nine months and served it on the brewery’s first anniversary as “Inaugural Ale.” It was 15 months old when he hauled it to GABF." Funny that 16 years later at Russian River he is now plastering "Drink fresh, do not age!" on every bottle of Pliny the Elder... not that I'm complaining!

Cosmos DIPA

Appearance – Darker yellow, with warm burnt orange tones. There is still a slight haze (it was cloudy when young), not shocking for a dry hopped beer. Fine white head starts dense, but dissipates over a couple minutes despite the hop resins.

Smell – Ample “America” hop aroma, some tropical and citrus, but also pine. The hop character is more complex than I usually expect from a single varietal, but it isn't quite as assertive as I would like. There is some clean sweet ethanol as well, not obnoxious, but on the high side for the style.

Taste – Firm bitterness, clean, slightly rough. Saturated with big green and fruity hops, lingering into the finish. The malt character is almost completely covered up, but what is there is clean and crisp. I recently had my first taste of Alchemist Heady Topper, and enjoyed the slightly bready (without caramel) malt character.

Mouthfeel – Light body with moderate carbonation. This is what I like in a strong hoppy beer, a thick body would have made this too close to an American barleywine.

Drinkability & Notes – I am a fan of this beer, but if I brewed it again I would back down the alcohol. For a big DIPA this is a very drinkable beer, but at close to 9% I am taking my time. Seems Galaxy is great for anything that you might use Simcoe for, terrific hop!

Measuring Sour Beer pH

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:59:00 +0000

Many homebrewers know that pH plays an important role at several points during brew day, including: mash enzyme effectiveness, hop utilization, and protein coagulation. Some maybe even know that pH can also be used to test to monitor yeast activity on a clean beer (as I was told when a Pilsner I brewed last winter failed to start fermenting). Probably not as many of us (myself included) pay enough attention to it. I only check mash pH if I am doing something really dark or light (using test strips), but I wasn't motivated to buy a pH meter until I decided it would be fun to test my sour beers.

As pH is a measure of acidity (actually the concentration of hydronium ions) it gives a hard number to confirm what our tongues report. Knowing the pH of the beer allows you to track the progress of the acid producing bacteria, or judge when the souring is complete. Keeping track of the acidity can make your results more repeatable, especially if you do not have a sensitive palate.

The meter I bought is a Hanna HI 98107 (~$40 on Amazon), which also requires a storage solution and two buffered calibration solutions to use (which doubles the price). The storage solution prevents the probe from degrading (although even with it I'll be lucky to get more than a year out of it apparently). Before measuring the pH of a sample the meter requires two point calibration. First the storage solution must be rinsed off. Then the probe is dipped into a buffered 7.0 (neutral) solution and a small small screw is adjusted on the side of the case to get the display to read 7.0. After rinsing off the probe with water, it is calibrated in a 4.01 pH buffered solutiuon (a 10.01 solution is available for taking readings of solutions above 7 pH) and the second screw is adjusted so it reads 4.0. Once the probe is rinsed a third time it is ready to use.

The samples must be uncarbonated to get an accurate reading because dissolved carbon dioxide (aka carbonic acid) lowers the pH reading. pH is also affected by temperature, the warmer the sample the lower the reading. Unless you buy a more expensive meter that has automatic temperature correction you will need to take readings at the same temperature so they are comparable. Like gravity readings you can correct for temperature, but this introduces variance.

I decided to try the meter out for the first time during our blending session since I had plenty of uncarbonated room-temperature samples to test. I should have read the instructions more carefully in advance because I didn't realize that before using the meter for the first time it needed to be soaked in the storage solution for two hours to activate the electrode. While it soaked we proceeded with blending, and by the time we came up with our ratios and ate lunch the two hours had passed.

The pH of the eight sour beers I tested ranged a full point (as pH is a logarithmic scale the Berliner Lambic was 10 times more acidic than the Big Funky Ale).

4.1 - Big Funky Ale
3.7 - Cherry/Raspberry Lambic 2.0
3.7 - Irma
3.5 - Dark Saison III
3.4 - Buckwheat Amber
3.3 - Fruit Salad 3.2 - Apple Brandy Solera
3.1 - Berliner Lambic

At the high end of that range beers taste tart, while down at 3.1 they have a bracing acidity. For the most part the readings confrimed what we tasted, but it was surprising to see what the different levels of acidity translated to. The one surprise was that despite both testing 3.7, the Irma tasted much sourer than the Fruit Lambic, maybe the acidity was offset by the higher alcohol?

When the testing was finished I rinsed off the probe, put on a few drops of the storage solution and snapped the cover back on. I'm interested to take it out next time I get a few friends together to drink sour beers to see how beers from different breweries (and made with different methods) stack up.

A simpler, but less accurate, method is to use pH test strips. The chemical indicator impregnated onto them changes color when submerged in the beer. When the color is stable they are compared to a chart, which is impossible to read with the same degree of accuracy as a digital readout (especially if you happen to be colorblind). The main advantages of the strips are that they are relatively cheap and require no additional care or calibration. I have had good luck with ColorpHast pH test strips for monitoring mash pH, but the standard pH range of 7.0-4.0 sold to homebrewers is not useful for monitoring the souring process, luckily they are also sold in the 4.5-2.5 pH range. These also need to be used on flat room temperature samples for the highest accuracy. However ColorpHast strips have a .2 pH resolution and so may not provide enough accuracy for fine tuning a beer.

The character of the acidity is not solely a matter of the pH however. Different acids contribute various characters to the beer. A beer that has a pH of 3.5 from the presence of lactic acid will have a much mellower character than a beer that has the same pH resulting from acetic acid. Other characters in the beer including residual sweetness can balance the acidity as well. A well trained palate is your best tool for determining what the character of a blend should be, but pH measurements are a way to improve your ability to judge acidity (rather than treating it as an abstract number to be targeted).

Riwaka Hefe Weizen Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:44:00 +0000

Wheat beers are supposed to be best fresh, hoppy beers too, right? For some reason the Riwaka Hefe Weizen that I brewed in early August just keeps getting better. Young the beer tasted strongly phenolic and yeasty, but it has cleaned up beautifully in the 6 weeks it has been on tap. That is one of the advantages of kegging, the beer has just been cold conditioning and continuing to pick up hop aromatics from the hops in the keg.

This is the second in my series of Southern Hemisphere hopped beers, the final (Galaxy Double IPA) will be ready for its tasting next week.

Riwaka HoppyWeizen

Appearance – Perfect, almost immobile, sticky, dense, white head. The body would be ugly for any beer other than a hefe weizen (ruddy orange-gold).

Smell – The nose suits the color with a potent citrus character (particularly fresh orange peel) and plenty of banana aroma. The combination of citrus and banana is complementary (smells like a fruit smoothie).

Taste – The aromatics from the nose come through in the flavor as well, but they are joined by a fresh caramel malt and bread. There is some light clove-spice (and maybe some cinnamon), but I think the hops are covering it up a bit. The bitterness is more assertive than a hefe weizen usually is, close to a hoppy pale ale. Rising bread yeasty finish.

Mouthfeel – Medium-light body with prickly carbonation. Right for a fall beer, but it might have been a bit thicker than I wanted if this was a summertime beer.

Drinkability & Notes – It took a few weeks on gas for this one to come together, but I'm really happy with where it is now. Riwaka seems like a good hop for anything you'd usually use Cascade or Centennial anything you want fresh orange aromatics. I didn't miss the decoction that I did for my previous batch of Hoppy Hefe, the hops covering any subtleties gained.

Cherry Wood Smoked Roggenbier Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:23:00 +0000

Recipes and ingredients are important, but brewing the best beer requires control over your process. You might get lucky once, but consistently great beer does not come with chance. The more variables you can manage the more repeatable your process will be, and the closer you can dial in a target. For example, mashing offers a level of control that you give-up by using extract. For where my process is, gaining more control over the fermentation is more important than focusing on wort production. For example, I can set the ambient fermentation temperature, but setting the temperature of the beer itself would be better; I make starters to ensure healthy/active yeast, but doing cell counts and viability tests to know what I am pitching would be better.

When it comes to smoked beers the biggest problem that brewers have is the variable nature of commercially smoked malt. Aecht Schlenkerla (which brews almost nothing but smoked beers) overcomes variability by smoking their own, blending different lots of smoked malt into the same batch of beer, and then blending multiple batches of beer together for packaging. As a homebrewer all that blending isn’t feasible, but then we don't need the exacting level of consistency. The biggest issue we have with smoked malt is that the aroma tends to fade as the malt ages, and unless you are able to find out how fresh the malt is it is hard to anticipate how much to use. By smoking your own malt you can exert more control over the process (not to mention play with smoke from less common woods as well as herbs, spices, I've even seen recipes that call for tossing strips of bacon onto the fire).

My friend Scott (who I brewed with for the first time shortly after moving to DC five years ago) invited me to his house to brew 10 gallons of smoked roggenbier (similar to a dunkel weisse, but with rye in place of the wheat). I have brewed a number of smoked beers before (Rauch Dunkel, Smoked Baltic Porter, Smoked Imperial Porter, Adambier, Smoked Doppelsticke, and DCHB Apple Smoked Stout), but this was the first time using home-smoked malt. New Glarus brewed a beer along the same lines (Unplugged Smoked Rye Ale – which was brewed with a combination of German beechwood and Briess cherry wood smoked malts), but it is stronger and smokier than something we wanted five gallons of.

(A few weeks earlier...) to smoke the malt Scott thoroughly mixed base malt with enough distilled water to moisten (~1 cup in 5 lbs). Dampness helps the smoke to stick, and distilled water ensures that there is no chlorine, which would combine with the phenols in the smoke to produce medicinal tasting chlorophenols. Scott spread the damp malt onto old window screens placed in his smoker (the same one we used two years ago to smoke bacon). He made a small fire in the corner of the smoke box as far back from the main cavity of the smoker as he could to keep the heat low enough to avoid scorching the malt. He added cherry wood chips each time the smoke died down. Woods from fruit trees tends to produce a sweeter and softer smoke than other woods, making them a good choice when smoking malt for a beer fermented with a fruity yeast. After a couple hours the malt was dry and fragrant. He sealed it in a large Tupperware container where it stayed until I came over to brew (he had also used some in a smoked mild).

In addition to the rye and smoked malts we included Pilsner, Munich, CaraMunich, and Carafa Special II. Between the nearly 50% rye malt, specialty malts, and the assertive yeast we wanted to go easy on the smoked malt, so we settled on 3 lbs in 10 gallons. We ended up with a few more IBUs than anticipated due to a miscalculation in splitting the batch for two boils, but it the original gravity is towards the big end of the style so I’m not worried.

POSTPONED On a side note, Sunday December 11th from 2-5 PM I’ll be teaching another homebrewing class at Mountain View Farm in Purcellville, VA. This one will primarily be an introduction to brewing, but there will also be time to discuss whatever questions people have. If you are interested in attending the deal is the same as last time ($25/person or $40/couple), send an email to Shawna (shawna_dewitt@yahoo.com) to register. I'll also be bringing samples of the Peach-Amber Wheat we brewed during the August class. POSTPONED

Cherry Wood Smoked Roggenbier

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 10.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 26.75
Anticipated OG: 1.062
Anticipated SRM: 16.7
Anticipated IBU: 33.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain
------
44.9% - 12.00 lbs. Rye Malt
18.7% - 5.00 lbs. Munich Malt
18.7% - 5.00 lbs. Pilsener
11.2% - 3.00 lbs. Cherry Wood Smoked
5.6% - 1.50 lbs. CaraMunich
0.9% - 0.25 lbs. Carafa Special II

Hops
------
4.00 oz. Crystal (Whole, 4.75% AA) @ 60 min.

Extras
-------
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
WYeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Springfield, VA

Mash Schedule
----------------
Saccharification Rest: 60 min @ 153 F

Notes
-------
Brewed 10/29/11 at Scott's

Scott had home smoked the malt over cherry wood (mixed in enough distilled water to get it wet, then laid it over a screen with a very low fire all the way back in his firebox).

Tried to distribute the runnings from the double batch sparge evenly between two kettles. We ended up a bit under volume, but with plenty of gravity

Chilled to 65 F. Ran through a screen to remove the hops. Aerated with pure oxygen. Scott made a 2L stir-plate starter, decanted and pitched half into each 5 gallon batch.

I ended up with 4.5 gallons of wort at 1.072, added 3/4 gallon of distilled water when I got home to dilute. Fermented at ~58 F ambient with the lid just resting on top of the 8 gallon bucket. Active fermentation by the following morning, nearly blowing off by day #2. I left the lid resting on the bucket for a low-pressure open fermentation effect.

11/06/11 Moved upstairs (~62 F) to make sure the yeast was warm enough to finish fermenting.

11/20/11 Down to 1.010. Racked to a purged keg with 3 oz of cane sugar to prime. Really full keg.

1/19/11 Reasonably happy with the way this batch turned out. If I brewed it again I would back down on the rye and hops, and up the smoke slightly. I think the cherry wood is a mild enough complement to the yeast and malt, good choice there.

The best pumpkin beers...

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:52:00 +0000

taste like pumpkin pie - 33%
I've never had one I liked - 24%
have just a hint of spice - 24%
taste like pumpkin - 9%
are historic/colonial/sour - 7%

Pumpkin ale is a style that has some historical basis, but the cinnamon/nutmeg/ginger pie inspired creations are a relatively recent phenomenon. Colonists added pretty much anything fermentable they could get their hands on (molasses, spruce, various root vegetables) to augment or replace the malts they had. It is hard to tell what these original beers tasted like, but Randy Mosher provides his take on one in Radical Brewing.

As the poll indicates, not many people want gourd to be the primary flavor in their beer. This isn't a bad thing since it can be tough to use enough pumpkin to get that subtle earthy flavor into a beer, which is probably the reason so many brewers go heavy on the pumpkin pie spice. I'm not a fan of most of the standard, highly spiced, amber pumpkin ales that flood the market this time of year. I've had better luck with those based on dark beers like Cape Ann Fisherman's Pumpkin Stout, Midnight Sun TREAT, and St. Arnold Divine Reserve #9. The roast tends to cut the spices and provide more "beer" character. I've been meaning to re-brew the Chocolate Pumpkin Porter I made on a whim three years ago, but I missed my chance again this year (I have a chance to make another pumpkin keg either).

Talking to Ron Jeffries at Jolly Pumpkin for an article I am researching about American spontaneous fermentation for BYO he mentioned that this year he boosted the spicing in La Parcela (his sour pumpkin beer) just because he was sick of people complaining that they couldn't taste them. I don't know, when I brewed a Butternut Squash Sour Brown a few years ago I aimed for threshold levels of cinnamon and nutmeg, which seemed about right to me. Alphine's Ichabod from 2007 and 2009 was another great sour pumpkin beer, a revelation when I first tried it. The sample of Allagash's Ghoulschip (bottles of which were just sold for the first time) I had last year was good, although I was disappointed that it wasn't especially sour (while it is cooled in their coolship it is then pitched with ale yeast).

Between pumpkin ale and Oktoberfest fall seasonals aren't something I look forward to much, but happy to take suggestions in the comments if anyone has a favorite pumpkin ale.

Plum Sour Dubbel Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:37:00 +0000

Valley Malt started production in Western Massachusetts last year, producing a range of malts from locally grown barley, wheat, and rye (80 acres worth this year - about one ton per week). It isn't often that a new maltster opens on the East Coast, so I thought I'd show some support by buying 50 lbs of their pale malt and a couple more of dark crystal to see if they are worth seeking out. It probably would have been smart to do the first trial with something simple and clean like a pale ale... but the dark crystal, plus a couple bottles of dark candi syrup and a bag of frozen plums I already had on hand, called for something more interesting: a double batch of dubbel.

I realize that Pilsner malt is more traditional, but I recently had a bottle of St. Bernardus Prior 8 which had more bready malt character than most of the American brewed dubbels I have tasted. While I love the complex caramel and dark fruit that dark candi syrup brings to a beer, I have not been satisfied with the flavor it gives a dubbel without the addition of dark crystal malt. I was sad that I didn't get around to ordering anything for Candi Syrup Inc to make it a completely American beer.

On brew day I put the strike water on the stove to heat and went down to the basement to weigh/crush the malt. The non-driven wheel on my Barley Crusher mill hadn’t been turning as easily as it used to (time to take it apart and clean it again) so I didn’t think much of it when I had to reverse the drill a couple times to get it to catch. About halfway through I heard a crunching metallic noise. I emptied the hopper, but didn’t see what had caused the noise. When I started milling again it ran fine for a few seconds, but then came that noise again. I emptied out the hopper a second time, sifted through the uncrushed grain, and finally found a grain sized pebble. If anything it made me appreciate how amazing it is that I’ve never had that happen before.

Much of the work that used to be done in the brewery with step mashes and decoctions (dealing with excess protein, and poorly modified malt etc...) is now largely taken care of by the maltster. Few modern malts require anything more elaborate than a single infusion rest at the desired saccharification temperature. I was told by the homebrew store owner who sold me the malt that Valley Malt's malts benefit from a short protein rest. The mash didn’t look or run-off any different than any other pale malt, but while the wort was coming to a boil it did inflate one of the densest protein foams I have ever experienced.

I had bought WLP545 Belgian Strong Ale (one of the Sep/Oct Platinum strains) to ferment with, my first time using the strain. For half of the batch my friend Luke and I also pitched the dregs from a few bottles of sour beer that we drank while we brewed. That half will also receive oak cubes, and a couple pounds of methyl plums I bought at the farmer’s market and froze this summer. This is somewhat inspired by Captain Lawrence Rosso e Morrone which is the barrel aged version of their St. Vincent’s Dubbel with red wine grapes. I may have had one too many of said sour beers... I mixed up the carboys while running off and tossed the dregs from the last bottle into the clean half (I'm planning on serving it young on tap, so it may just add some rustic charm). Both halves started fermenting in the low-60s ambient, with only the clean half boosted into the 70s F after the first four days of fermentation.

American Malt Dubbel

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 10.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 23.00
Anticipated OG: 1.058
Anticipated SRM: 20.8
Anticipated IBU: 20.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
-----------------
87.0% - 20.00 lbs. Valley Pale Malt
4.3% - 1.00 lbs. D2 Candi Sugar Syrup
4.3% - 1.00 lbs. D Candi Sugar Syrup
4.3% - 1.00 lbs. Valley Dark Crystal

Hops
--------
1.75 oz. Hallertauer Tradition (Pellet, 6.00% AA) @ 60 min.

Extras
----------
1.00 Unit(s) Whirlfloc @ 5 Min.

Yeast
---------
White Labs WLP545 Belgian Stong Ale

Water Profile
--------------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
-----------------------
Protein Rest - 25 min @ 128 F
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 153 F

Notes
---------
10/21/11 Made a 3.5 L starter with a one month old tube of yeast, shook intermittently to aerate.

Brewed 10/23/11 with Luke

Collected 9 gallons of 1.060 runnings. Added candi syrups as it came to a boil. 2 gallons of final runnings boiled separately and added back at cooling. Chilled to ~70 F, racked into two carboys onto half of the starter in each. Shook to aerate.

Added dregs from Anchorage Love Buzz Saison, Russian River Consecration, Wine Barrel Solera, and De Dolle Oreabier Reserva to the short fill. Accidentally added the dregs from a Bourbon Barrel Sour Porter to the clean portion... might add a hint of tartness funk as the beer ages.

Quick start to fermentation in the low-60s ambient.

10/27/11 Put the clean half into a pot and onto a heating pad set to high to boost the temperature to ensure complete attenuation and a bit more Belgian yeast character.

10/31/11 Fermentation appears complete so I turned off the heating pad.

11/6/11 Down to 1.015, big nutmeg aroma. Racked the "clean" portion to a keg. Racked the sour potion to a 3 gallon and a 1 gallon fermentor.

12/21/11 Great tasting result, especially for only two months old. The malt and candi sugar work together really well, complex without making the beer too sweet.

Sour Beer Blending Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (The Mad Fermentationist (Mike)) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:11:00 +0000

With three of my beer nerd friends (Alex, Dyan, and Matt) having their first children in 2011, it seemed like a good excuse to trick them into bottling some beer for me. I respect all of their palates so I invited them over (along with my friends Nathan and Peter) to help blend and bottle a selection of sour beers I’d been aging for between 9 and 18 months. Sadly Dyan’s child had been born only a week earlier and Matt was busy (apparently children these days are no longer capable of raising themselves), but we decided to go forward with the plan anyway and just give those two a few bottles.

Blending is one of the only aspects of brewing that is an art (as opposed to a craft or janitorial work). Being able to taste a variety of beers and mix them together to get something greater than the individual components is difficult and takes practice, especially since bottle conditioning will alter the flavor of the beer. Most of my experience with blending is from combining commercial beers or homebrews in the glass. This was the first time that I had enough beers ready at the same time to conduct a legitimate blending session.

There were seven beers available: Berliner Lambic (5% brightly acidic Berliner weisse), Fruit Salad (a blend itself of a Golden Sour on soursop and the Quick Oud Bruin on raspberries and black raspberries), Dark Saison III (with buckwheat honey, figs, and fall spices), Apple Brandy Golden Solera (sharply acidic, and pretty oaky), Buckwheat Amber (young and fairly restrained), Irma (the amber saison Nathan and I brewed at McKenzie Brew House last fall... the "Extra" barrel aged version of which is running a 4.3 on BA), and Capitol City ESB on Brett (the last of a keg I won, which I pitched Brett Brett B into a few months ago).

After tasting and discussing each of the beer on its own we began playing with different combinations, taking notes, and passing around our favorites. After the initial round of tasting no one liked the Fruit Salad (the soursop gives it a weird Parmesan flavor), or the Cap City (too young and hoppy still) enough to include them so I put those carboys back for further aging. When we started to get close to our targets for the actual blends we measured the ratios by making 100 g samples on a scale. It was easy to figure out the percentages and a reasonable sample size to get a real taste of the beer. We took 50 g of each blend and poured it into a separate cup, that way after taking a sip there was still a reserved amount that could be adjusted from a known starting point. Below are the blends each of us settled on:

Alex
50% Apple Brandy
30% Berliner Lambic
20% Dark Saison III

Nathan
33% Dark Saison III
33% Irma
33% Apple Brandy

Peter
66% Berliner Lambic
18% Buckwheat Amber
16% Apple Brandy

Mine
40% Buckwheat Amber
40% Dark Saison III
15% Berliner Lambic
5% Apple Brandy

With all the blends determined, Peter checked the math to ensure that we'd have enough of all of the beers to bottle two gallons of each blend and still have at least two gallons leftover of each beer to bottle straight (luckily we did).

Before we started bottling I distributed one packet of rehydrated champagne yeast between the carboys (to avoid having to add yeast to each of the eight buckets to come). Ideally we would have had a scale with a large enough capacity to use weigh to dial in the blends, but I didn't so we used the marks on the side of the bottling bucket as a guide to measure by volume. All of these beers were similarly dry, so we did not bother to factor in an adjustment for the switch from weight to volume. When blending like this an auto-siphon is a must, but hold the end of the tubing above the beer until the air is cleared from the line and the next beer starts to flow (otherwise you’ll be oxidizing the beer as the air bubbles in the line out).

Before priming the blender tasted the scaled up combination to see if any adjustments were needed, in Peter's case the beer was not as bright as he wanted so we a quart of additional Berliner Lambic. To prime the blends I boiled 5.5 oz of table sugar in 1 pint of water, adding 1/2 cup for each two gallon. For the plain batches I made individual priming solutions tailored to their specific flavor/volume. One gallon of Peter's blend and one gallon of the straight Buckwheat Amber each went onto one pound of sour cherries. I had considered dry hopping some of the beers as well, but did not notice one that called for it. Lots of tasting to come in a couple months.

One of the keys to blending is to have beers with a variety of characters. In this case we had a huge range since the beers were all brewed with different recipes, microbes, and with or without spices, oaks etc... but this is not the only way. If you are looking to make a more focused blend you can use the same recipe with different microbes (like the collaborative Isabelle Proximus), methods (as the Bruery does with Oude Tart – fermenting some spontaneously in the barrels for more sourness), or ages (as Lambic brewers do). Some brewers also keep a pale colored "acid beer" on hand that is used to lighten the color/flavor and add acidity without contributing much of its own flavor (with a pH of 3.1, that role was filled by the Berliner Lambic in our case).

It ended up being a successful Saturday afternoon. I got bottles, bottling assistance, and a variety of blends while everyone else got some free beer (half of their blend, and bottles of all the other blends and single batch bottlings). Hopefully with so many carboys now empty I’ll finally be able to start brewing for the Great Souring Experiment (which would lend itself perfectly to another session like this once all of the batches are ready).