The Mad Fermentationist - Homebrewing Blog

Embracing Inefficiency in Craft Brewing

2024-10-22T10:54:00.002-04:00

I used to do a talk titled "Embracing Homebrewing" (here it is on the Beersmith Podcast). Basically, rather than worry about replicating the exact process/results of a craft brewery, enjoy the things that you can do on a small scale without regulatory oversight (dosing in spirits, ice distillation, foraging) or economic pressures (expensive ingredients, not worrying about extract efficiency) etc.

The more great brewers I talk to... the more I realize that Scott and I run Sapwood Cellars like a big homebrewing operation more than a small craft brewery. We're lucky that we have enough support and direct sales that don't have to worry too much about cost, time, or efficiency. This post dives into that a little deeper on the benefits of inefficiency using the six beers included in the upcoming shipment of our Out-of-State Shipping Club as examples!

Variability: Flemish Gothic

Most mixed-ferm breweries have a single house culture they pull off a tank or set of barrels or a specific commercial microbe blend that they add to every batch of a given beer. It makes a lot of sense, it promotes consistency and you don't have to worry about blending/attenuation. However, for me it lacks the dynamic flavor options and variety in finished beers I love. Every time we brew a new sour base beer, we select a barrel with a culture that suits it, and add some to primary (along with a healthy Saccharomyces pitch).

Flemish Gothic is a beer we blended from three different wine barrels, with three different base sour reds (Standard Red, Provisional Strength, Vin De Céréale) each with a different culture. That allowed us to dial in the acidity, malt balance, and level of Brett expression. It worked out that we did a three-year blend rather than the standard old/young blend done by Rodenbach and many other Flemish Reds.

Flemish Gothic Tasting Notes

Smell - Real range, right from the start. Honey, leather, blackberry fruit leather, some dried hay of hops. Cocoa, Tootsie Pop. I could see Balsamic, but without the vinegar or nail polish.

Appearance - Beautiful ruby red. Good clarity. Stable off-white foam, pours three fingers.

Taste - Bright lactic acidity, with dried cherries in the finish. No acetic harshness in the finish. Mild perceived fruity sweetness. A little damp oak, but not aggressively woody despite the extended aging thanks to the well used barrels. Could have even used a little more. Slight licorice as it warms.

Mouthfeel - Medium body, pretty smooth. Firm carbonation. Slightly oaky astringency.

Drinkability - Really good, lots of malt/barrel/Brett character all working together without excessive acidity. One of my favorite sours we’ve done, right up there with Growth Rings. I’d like to blend something similar again in a few years.

Changes for Next Time - A few people suggested more acidity, but I like it as is. It’s considerably more acidic than my recollection of Flemish Kiss from Commons. I’ll be looking forward to seeing how this one ages.

Effort: Gindicators 2024

Local in-season fruit is less expensive than buying IQF or Puree. What you are paying for with those is convenience and consistency. Buying locally requires figuring out who grows good produce, building relationships, and being on top of communication. For Gindicators, we sourced peaches, nectarines, and apricots as the summer progressed. I picked through them each day, processing and freezing the fruit that was ripe. Waiting on the rest. It's worth it for me to go that extra length to create the best stone fruit aroma possible!

We paired that with a low-acidity (higher hoping rate) pale base aged in gin barrels. Stone fruit in general and apricots in particular bring a lot of their own acidity. After refermentation we blended in a 30 gallon "double gin-barrel-finished" higher-acid beer to add more gin character.

Gindicators 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Funky nose, damp hay Brett. As a result, it reads more saison-ish than our sours usually do. Melds in a fun way with citrus and rosemary notes from the barrels. Plenty of stone fruit, yellow peach especially, but leaves room for the other aromatics. Pez candy. Overall vibrant and varied.

Appearance - Mild haze, bright yellow body. Sticky white head, good density. End of the bottle pour has some small yeast floaties. Seems like more yeast adhered in the bottle than usual too. Maybe the 58W3 from refermentaiton?

Taste - Snappy acidity (malic?), glad we selected lower acid barrels for this one! Tastes more acidic than the >3.5 pH suggests. Lots of fresh apricot and nectarine on the palate. Minimal sweetness. Juniper comes through in the finish, piney, Sprite-like. Faint bitterness from the higher IBU component in the blend.

Mouthfeel - Firm carbonation. Light body, but not tannic or harsh despite the extended aging.

Drinkability - The acid level is just about right for my tastes, lingers for a second, but then goes.

Changes for Next Time - Not much to change on this one. I could be tempted to go up 25% on the fruit, it had a little more punch before we blended in the last 30 gallon gin barrel. Likely wasn’t necessary to repitch yeast so soon after refermentation on the fruit?

Process: Neologism 2024

We treat our sour beers with the same care and attention to sanitation and oxygen ingress as we do our Hazy IPAs. We purge the barrels and bottles with CO2, we fill the blending tank with water and push it out to remove all of the oxygen before transers. I think it really shows with the "vibrancy" of the aromatics we are able to achieve, especially in a dry hopped sour like Neologism. It goes into the blending tank on hops, and infuses cold for 48 hours before bottling. Since we can't do a water push out with the hops in there, we do the push out, then add the hops while purging with CO2.

The only previous batch of Neologism was named to Craft Beer & Brewing's Top 20 of 2022... that was the only beer we ever entered into a contest of any type!

Neologism 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Expressive in the nose with the gin shining. Spruce tips. Barnyard. Hops aren't as "raw" as an IPA, but it is still fresh smelling.

Appearance - Head is great (dense, long lasting). Slightly hazy golden.

Taste - A little of that guava thing from the first batch is starting to come through, awesome. Pleasant acidity, tart, but not harsh. Gin is a little more savory-herbal than previous gin beers: rosemary, spruce, bruised basil. A touch of oaky-vanillin as it warms.

Mouthfeel - Light astringency, firm carbonation. Light body.

Drinkability - I think this one will continue to improve as the edges soften and the hops integrate more. Still wish we could get more of those McClintock Reserva barrels, but even the second use one really helped this one!

Changes for Next Time - On point! Not this beer… but would still love to do a Tangerine-Gin and/or a Guava Gin at some point.

Risk: Honeymoon SZN

We try a lot of different things that "sound like a good idea." It would certainly be easier and more reliable to pick a slate of brands to make every year. We do rebrew/blend the same beers occasionally, but we don't have a firm schedule and we always try to leave room for inspiration based on what barrels, ingredients, and flavors we have available.

For Honeymoon SZN we started with a collab we brewed at Olde Mother Brewing (Frederick). Wedding SZN was a rice ale with Nelson Sauvin, elderflowers, and Phantasm (along with a natural thiol-releasing yeast strain). We racked it to white wine barrels and let the resident culture work. I sourced muscadine/scuppernong grapes (indigenous) through a local farmstand that has a relationship with a grower in South Carolina. I knew it was a good idea from the aroma of my car on the way back - halfway between Nelson Sauvin and Strawberry candy!

Honeymoon SZN Tasting Notes

Smell - Muscadine really comes through. Lots of white grape juice. Some toasty-funk, but not a primary aroma when cold. Bridges the gap between the Nelson and Brett.

Appearance - Clear. Very pale yellow. Good thick white head that doesn’t last long.

Taste - Light acidity, even less than Life is Ridiculous. Good fruit character, unique, fresh. A touch of funky smoke in the finish I haven’t noticed before. No elderflower.

Mouthfeel - Bright, light, spritzy.

Drinkability - Good, could use a touch more acid, but it is very drinkable as is.

Changes for Next Time - Not sure muscadine is a star… would be fun with a light dry hop. Maybe with another fruit, stone fruit?

Time: Opulence 2024

We age our beers for a long time. Years ago I visited an established brewery that had just added a large barrel facility for sour beers. The brewer running it mentioned he had to meet a monthly production quota for packaged product. Just seems impossible for that to produce fantastic beer. Sometimes we go a month without bottling anything because the beer isn't ready yet... sometimes we are doing back-to-back runs because we don't want something to sit any longer! Opulence 2024 was supposed to be Opulence 2023, but the beer just wasn't ready for the cherries after 8 months in the barrel... but it was at 20 months! We had some leftover high-acidity beer from the previous batch of Opulence kegged off that we blended in with the "fresher" beer that was aged in second-use Cherry Brandy barrels.

Opulence 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Reminds me of my homebrews (in a good way). Funk (leathery) really comes through along with cherry and almond. Cherry is really fun, lots of cherry pie, vanilla, and depth. Nothing weird from the cherry brandy barrels considering the previous use was Imperial Stout.

Appearance - I wish the clarity was a little better, but the color is a pleasant amber-orange. Great off-white head.

Taste - Mild acidity, could be a little higher. Detectable bitterness (maybe a hair high). Good cherry flavor, sour cherry pie, vibrant.

Mouthfeel - Light astringency, which is disruptive to the smoothness. Firm carbonation, medium-thin body.

Drinkability - It’s solid. I like the lower acidity compared to past batches, but the bitterness gets in the way.

Changes for Next Time - I wonder if aged hops rather than fresh in the whirlpool would work without providing any weird aromatics? I really like what the Saaz in the whirlpool did for the aroma and balance (lower acidity), but the bitterness clashes with the acidity in flavor… despite being “only” 19 IBUs. Maybe better to go with some alpha acid extract in the tank?

Equipment: Stained 2024

One thing that has worked out well for us is having smaller equipment. Rather than be forced to do big blends, we have equipment that is sized for flexibility. For example, with Stained we age it on wine grapes and raspberries separately. I'm sensitive to the "seedy" flavor that comes from long contact time with raspberries... but I also enjoy the deeper flavors of extended skin contact on grapes. So for this batch we kegged off the raspberry half after two weeks, while the Merlot grapes continued aging for another month until we liked the flavor. This plays into having the time to taste and adjust the production schedule.

Stained 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Berries, especially raspberries… go figure. Certainly reads Flemish Red, Rodenbach etc. rather than Lambic thanks to no big funk/rubber.

Appearance - Bright red, thin off-white head drops quickly. Good clarity, but not brilliant. Very attractive.

Taste - Raspberry popsicle, very bright. Suggestion of sweetness from the fruit and malt. THP has cleaned up. Jammy, not overtly malty, but it fills in the fruit. Firm acidity, no harshness. Wine is subdued, but layers complexity and roundness compared to straight raspberries. Clean, not much funk although there is some earthiness. Oak is subdued thanks to third-use barrels.

Mouthfeel - Medium-light, firm carbonation. Not thin or watery, helps support the fruit.

Drinkability - Good, plenty of acid for my tastes, delicious fruit. Could be a little more interesting microbially, but it works in the Flemish tradition.

Changes for Next Time - Could shift more towards the Merlot? Surprised how much acidity it picked up despite the alpha acid extract in the tote.

Out of State Shipping Club

If you are interested in tasting these beers, please sign-up by 10/28! You'll be charged $146 to your card on file and expect to receive your beer the first week of November! Available in: WA, CA, OR, NM, NV, CO, MN, NY, DC, CT, NE, MA, FL, PA, NH, NJ, ID, TX, KS, IN, WI, MO, IA, IL, MI, ND, VA, RI, NC, and SC.

Includes one 500 mL bottle each:

Gindicators 2024: Gin-barrel-aged pale sour with Peaches, Nectarines, and Apricots

Flemish Gothic: 3-year Blend of Wine Barrel Aged Sour Reds

Opulence 2024: Sour Red with Fresh and Dried Sour Cherries aged in Cherry Brandy and Bourbon Barrels

Neologism 2024: Gin-barrel-aged and Mosaic Cryo Dry Hopped

Stained 2024: Wine-barrel-aged with Raspberries and Merlot Grapes

Honeymoon SZN: Wine-barrel-aged with Phantasm and Muscadine/Scuppernong Grapes

Inventing Cocktails Inspired by Craft Beer

2024-08-09T10:11:00.009-04:00

As someone with a "beer-centric" palate, it is often difficult for me to find cocktails that I enjoy. When I go to a cocktail bar and order something that sounds interesting, the flavors are often overwhelmingly concentrated, and the balance tends to be either super-sweet or super-boozy. The 20-30+% ABV of most cocktails also makes them rough to drink at the same rate you would a beer...

So, I thought it would be interesting to invent a few cocktails inspired by the balance and flavors of some of my favorite beer styles. If you want to drink something that tastes exactly like a beer… drink a beer! These cocktails are “inspired” by the flavors in the style and the overall balance of the style in terms of alcohol-bitterness-sweetness, they aren’t meant to be “ringers” for drinking a given beer. I'm also trying to avoid "uncommon" ingredients... although some of these may take a little searching at a specialty grocery/liquor store or online.

I’m not an experienced bartender or mixologist, if you try one of these let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions!

Ramos Gin Fizz... Hazy IPA

Gin and Tonic is my standard cocktail order because it isn't too strong or too sweet, and the bitter/herbal notes are something I appreciate. I also find Ramos GIn Fizz to be a fun one, with the added body of an egg white and cream, and more citrus from lemon juice and orange blossom water. In this "Hazy IPA" inspired riff, I swapped out the tonic for aromatic hop water. To replace the malt sweetness and enhance the juicy flavors from the hops I added orange juice. To keep it from being too one-note orange, I added New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, which contains high concentrations of many of the aromatics produced by Thiolized yeast and found in New Zealand hops. An egg white helps to add haze, foam, and body.

Recipe

In a shaker, combine:

1.5 oz Bombay Dry Gin

1.25 oz Orange Juice

1.25 oz Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc

1 Egg White

Dry shake 10 seconds

Pour into a glass, then top-up with:

6 oz Hop Water

6.7 % ABV

Ingredient Notes: The Hop Water you choose is up to you. I've enjoyed the ones from breweries as well as places like Hoplark. You can also make your own with carbonated water and some hop terpenes (I like the ones from Abstrax). Use pasteurized egg white if you are worried about the risk of salmonella. If you don't like orange, try mango or another juice that appeals to you.

Tasting Notes

Smell - Winey tropical-citrus. Slight herbal from the hops and gin. Doesn't read obviously juniper.

Appearance - Very pale, very hazy. Great sticky head.

Taste - Pleasantly sweet. Good balance of the juice and wine, without either dominating. The gin provides some depth, but again not overtly gin-y. The hop water brings herbal complexity without dominating the other ingredients with "hops."

Mouthfeel - Medium-light body, light carbonation.

Drinkability - Light and bright, citrusy.

Changes for Next Time - Certainly could add a few drops of hop terpenes if you want to send it more hoppy. Some hopped bitters could be a nice addition if you like a little more bitterness.

The Charleston... Rye Barrel English Barleywine

Thanks to Audrey, I've really come to enjoy fortified wines like Port, Sherry, and especially Madeira. It's traditionally made by halting fermentation with an addition of brandy to preserve the sweetness of the wine, then aged at elevated temperatures. The result is a like a concentrated barrel-aged English barleywine, woody, with dried fruit, and pleasant oxidative notes. I added Rye Whiskey to elevate the vanilla notes. Malta is essentially unfermented wort, but tends to have big caramel and malt extract notes from pasteurization. It helps by lowering the alcohol without thinning the cocktail, adding a little carbonation.

Recipe

Combine together:

.5 oz Bulleit Rye (95 Proof)

1 oz Broadbent 10 Year Verdelho Madeira

1 oz H&H 10 Year Sercial Madeira

Stir, then top with:

2 oz Malta India (or Malta Goya)

14.0% ABV

Ingredient Notes: Madeira comes in various sweetness levels, the really sweet ones are too sugary for my tastes in this. Sercial is the driest and Verdelho is off-dry, but find ones that work for your palate.

Tasting Notes

Smell - The vanilla/oak of the rye leads. Rich dried fruit behind it. There is some maltiness there, but definitely tastes like a really aged-out barleywine without any fresh graininess. Boozy, hotter than I'd expect from an English barleywine.

Appearance - Deep leathery brown. Good clarity. No head.

Taste - The Maderia really gives it an "aged" character, lots of raisin and date. The Sercial especially gives it a fun oxidative weirdness, and a faint acidity. There is a "sugary" sweetness, along with some alcohol warmth. Subtle bitterness.

Mouthfeel - Almost flat, "barrel sample" generously. Not quite as full as a real barleywine, but not watery or thin by any means.

Drinkability - This is one of the more evocative ones, really has a lot of the flavors you'd expect from a barrel-aged barleywine. It's a little sweet for me, but so are a lot of barleywines.

Changes for Next Time - Wish it had a little more carbonation. Otherwise it really satisfies that English Barleywine itch.

Sherry Shrub... Flemish Sour Red/Oud Bruin

One of the classic inclusions in the microbe blend for Flemish Red/Browns (e.g., Wyeast Roeselare) is Sherry Flor. This oxidative yeast forms the pellicle on sherry and produces the characteristics aldehydes that give sherry a nutty/fruity aroma. Oloroso is more "microbe" forward, funkier, while PX is more sweet and dried fruit (especially raisin). The acidity of the grapes needs a little help to mimic the classic examples of the style, so inspired by shrubs I added both vinegar and kombucha. The blend of sherries, sweetness of the kombucha, and amount of vinegar are all variables you can adjust.

Recipe

Combine together:

.5 oz Lustau Oloroso Sherry

.5 oz Lustau PX Sherry

.25 tsp Balsamic Vinegar

Stir, then top with:

3 oz Wild Bay Elderberry Kombucha

4.6% ABV

Ingredient Notes: The kombucha choice is tricky, a cherry kombucha is a nice choice if you are looking to replicate a fruited version of the style. For my palate I'd avoid those kombucha with stevia or other non-sugar sweeteners. Cream Sherry is a blend of Oloroso and PX and could be a stand-alone replacement (although you the flexibility or tweaking your blend).

Tasting Notes

Smell - Fun mix of red fruit and raisins. A little oak/almond. The elderberry works well compared to some other kombuchas since it isn't as distinct as cherry, strawberry et al. I like the Wild Bay since it doesn't have stevia or other non-sugar sweeteners.

Appearance - Clear, more amber than red. Color is about right. Not much foam.

Taste - Pleasantly sweet. Tart, with just a touch of vinegar. It has a good blend of fresh and dried fruit flavors, plum, fig, raisin etc. A little oaky. Has that classic Belgian Red balance with sugar balancing the acid.

Mouthfeel - Medium body, pleasant low carbonation.

Drinkability - This is a super interesting result for low ABV.

Changes for Next Time - Misses the maltiness of the real version, but it has the fruitiness, acid, oak, age. For a low ABV cocktail it really delivers, with the fermentation of the kombucha helping stretch the Sherry.

Espresso Martini... Coffee Stout

Flavored beers are one of the "easiest" points of entry since they already have big flavors that aren't from malt, hops, or yeast. That said, it seemed like a waste of time to make a smoothie sour cocktail. Coffee stout is still a stout, and seemed like a nice place to work in bourbon since it usually includes some barley and brings big oak aromatics that work well in stouts. A little Malta again provides body, sweetness, and a touch of carbonation.

Recipe

Combine together:

4 oz Cold Brew Coffee

1 oz Kahlua

1 oz Bourbon

Stir, then top with:

2 oz Malta India

7.5% ABV

Ingredient Notes: I should probably have sourced a "better" coffee liquor, but Kahlua is what we had on hand. Homemade cold brew would work just as well, if not better.

Tasting Notes

Smell - Big coffee nose, with some vanilla. It reads caramel malty, but not roasty.

Appearance - Deep brown, with red at the edges when held to the light.

Taste - Has a pleasant sweetness, certainly sweeter than a typical coffee stout thanks to the simple sugars. Nice note of bourbon woody/vanilla in the finish

Mouthfeel - Medium body, light carbonation.

Drinkability - I really like this one, more coffee-focused than a stout usually is, but the other notes round it out.

Changes for Next Time - I think this one straddles the line between traditional coffee stout and pastry stout. A little sugary compared to a classic stout.

Conclusion

This has been fun for me to work on the last couple months. I'll probably make a Part #2 if there is interest... already playing around with a West Coast Grapefruit IPA, Pastry Stout plus plans for Wit, Rauchbier, and Saison!

Shoot me a line if you try any of these out, or if you have suggestions or other ideas!

Getting the Most Out of Fruit in Beer: Jammiest Bit & Fruit of Many Uses

2024-05-20T10:31:00.009-04:00

While I love the pure expression of malt, water, hops, microbes, barrel, and time... fruit can make a fantastic addition to a barrel-aged sour. From a "sales" standpoint it is also easier to explain the difference between beers with fruit, than those with subtle differences in grain bill or microbes. Most people know they like cherries, plums, and raspberries... they may not know they enjoy horse blanket, minerality, or rubbery notes.

This is the third in a series of posts updating my thoughts from American Sour Beers ten years ago. The two beers featured below (Jammiest Bit and Fruit of Many Uses) were both part of the first shipment of the Sapwood Cellars Out of State Shipping Club. Memberships for that shipment are closed, but you can still sign-up now for the next shipment fall 2024 ($146/shipment including shipping). Bottles of both are still available at the tasting room!

Sourcing Fruit

I would almost always rather use fresh in-season local fruit over a puree, juice, freeze-dried, concentrate, and especially natural extract. Local produce tastes unique, meaning a beer that doesn't taste the same as one brewed on the other side of the country or by a larger brewery. You'll get a more complex character from having beer in contact with the stems, skins, pits etc. Working with farms, orchards, and vineyards "fits" the narrative of an artisanal product... making it look good on social media too! Not to mention our fruiting tanks (without conical and glycol jackets) work best with whole fruit rather than purees.

Talking directly to farms and orchards at farmer's markets is a great place to start. Tasting things, chatting about what sort of capacity (and excess) they might have. Sometimes you can get a good deal on seconds... but for me these often aren't worth it since it can take a lot of time and effort to sort them (going rotten before they are all ripe) and cut-out mold etc.

We've used IQF (Individual Quick Frozen) fruits several times with great results. For smaller batches I've just gone to supermarkets, found a product I like the flavor of... and bought out a couple locations. Online specialty purveyors like Northwest Wild Foods have weird things you might not find locally, like honeyberries. For lager batches we've ordered from Coloma Frozen Foods, but don't do it regularly as refrigerated shipping is expensive. Recently we've been getting our raspberries from Twin Springs Fruit Farm (which freezes their own). Using high-quality frozen fruit is something great lambic breweries do, and it allows to extend the fruiting season so you don't have to have enough tanks for all of your fruit beer at once!

That said, not all fruits are available locally. You can certainly source whole fruits from a good local produce supplier (and we have), but purees have their place too... especially in "smoothie" type sour beers. That said, there is no magic bullet on sourcing them. We've used Oregon Fruit, Greenwood Associates, Kerr/Ingredion, Asceptic Fruit Purees, Hop Havoc, Boiron, FruitGuild, and Araza. None of them are "always good" and none of them are always bad. It's often about preference. For example, Oregon Pineapple is thin, closer to juice, great for an IPA where you'll drop out the solids. Araza Pineapple is much thicker, perfect for a smoothie sour. Both taste great.

Frozen wine grapes are another great option, either juice or must. Again, I love working with local vineyards (Crow Vineyard and Winery has been especially nice to work with), but that isn't always an option! We've had good luck with Grapes for Wine and Wine Grapes Direct.

The only concentrates I've enjoyed are "freeze" concentrates (the wild blueberry and raspberry from Greenwood Associates are great). I've disliked the flavor of all of the standard high-concentration "boiled" concentrates which end up tasting like caramel, and are so thick that they are difficult to mix with beer. Granted, after an early batch with concentrates from Kerr we really haven't tried any more. On the other hand, Kerr's NFC (Not From Concentrate) raspberry juice was terrific, so I suspect the issue was the concentration.

Freeze-dried fruit can be a pretty good option for tropical fruits like mango. I've yet to find a mango puree that didn't taste cooked. The freeze-dried stuff tends to have a brighter "mango popsicle" flavor. It can be pricy, but there is a lot of flavor pound-for-pound. North Bay Trading generally seems to have the best bulk pricing.

Processing

We have a chest freezer at the brewery so we can keg fruit when it is ready, but not necessarily have to go onto it immediately. Freezing the fruit also helps break the cell walls allowing better/quicker contact and refermentation. Just make sure to line your freezer with cardboard so the bags don't stick to the interior. That's all we do for berries. Freeze them, let them thaw in the tank, then transfer beer on the next day.

When it comes to larger fruits (e.g., stone fruit like peaches and nectarines) we'll manually quarter them and discard the seeds/pits. In an ideal world we'd selectively process and freeze the fruit on a flow basis as it reached peak ripeness.

I've never had good luck with fermented citrus, so for limes, lemons, oranges, and grapefruit we use the zest. We use a Starfrit Electric Rotato Express. It struggles a bit on really large grapefruits, and we go through a couple a year as they just aren't sturdy enough for a "production" environment.

There is some science that cherry stems have glycosides that Brett can work on to free fruity aromatics... but in practice I find they add a "stemmy" flavor that reminds me of dried leaves. I like the pits though. Obviously nice to find a source that has your preferred processing so you don't have to do it!

However you process the fruit, purge the tank with CO2 thoroughly before transferring beer in. This will help ensure the brightest, freshest, fruit expression possible!

Reyeasting

We usually repitch rehydrated (with StartUp/GoFerm) wine yeast along with the fruit to ensure a rapid refermentation, scavenge oxygen, and enhance the fruit character. While our sour beer production area has "light" HVAC, we don't have jackets for our fruiting totes (Flextanks). As a result, we'll change our yeast depending on the seasonal temperature. Usually using more heat-tolerant red wine strains in the summer, and cool-loving whites in the winter.

We also add a small amount (5-7 PPM) of hop extract to prevent additional acidification if the beer is already sour enough for our tastes. See my article on hopping sours for more details.

Fruit Contact Time

I've slowly come to be an advocate for relatively short contact time, enough to ferment out the sugars, but not much more. This is especially true of raspberries (which develop a "seedy" flavor from extended contact). I've also heard strawberries as a quick-contact to reduce the phenolic "plastic" flavor they can develop. Although I've also read that can be varietal specific, and others claim freeze-drying can help mitigate.

If I'm aging a beer on raspberries and another fruit that I prefer longer contact, I'll do that separately in two totes. That way we can keg off the raspberry after 10-14 days, while the cherries, wine grapes etc. have a little more contact time (1-2 months). They we blend them together. This could also be accomplished sequentially by racking the beer off of the raspberries and then onto the cherries.

Separating Fruit and Beer

Our Flextanks have stainless steel filters from Utah Biodiesel Supply fitted over the racking arms with stoppers. A false bottom would likely work even better, but with a slow transfer we haven't had many issues with whole/pieces of fruit. The lone one I remember causing havoc with chunks of frozen mango that totally disintegrated.

Second Use Fruit

With all the time and effort of getting the fruit and processing it, we often try to get a second beer out of it. Second use fruit is more subtle, allowing a more "beer-forward" balance. You could likely get similar results from ~25% of the fruiting rate, but second use fruit is easier (and free)!

We'll often just push in a single keg of sour beer onto the fruit from a whole batch to "rinse" it. This gets a big fruit character and it's an easy way to make a unique one-off

We'll do a whole new batch onto especially high fruiting rate beers. For example when we did 4 lbs/gal of raspberries in Throwing Hearts with Other Half, we went onto the fruit with a sour red along with vanilla beans to make Galactic Swirl.

For Fruit of Many Uses, we racked the beer sequentially into each tote after a previous beer. Getting Chardonnay grapes (from Field Learning, our Bissell Brothers collab) before going into barrel, followed by raspberries, then cherries (both from Jammiest Bit), and white nectarines (Polite Company).

We haven't tried it, but I know some brewers who will knock-out fresh wort onto spent fruit as a way to get fruit flavor along with a strong house culture.

No matter your technique, be extra mindful of limiting oxygen exposure as you won't have refermentation to scavenge oxygen.

Jammiest Bit

Barrel #71 Golden Strong #3 (Pils, 2-row, Chit, Wheat malt, and Flaked Wheat to 1.056 with aged Celia and Lemondrop pellets). Primary fermentation with 58W3 and some microbes from a blend of older barrels that was primarily Yeast Bay Mélange (but also various dregs from Oxbow, Jester King, and Backacre). Then aged 17 months in a second-use Malbec barrel. The culture in the barrel itself was originally derived from a De Garde bottle.

Barrel #36 Marylambic #7 (Weyermann Barke Pilsner, Flaked Wheat, and Chit to 1.044 with .5 lbs/bbl aged East Kent Goldings). Primary fermentation T58. Then aged 13 months in a third-use Pinot Noir barrel. The microbes in the oak were originally from dregs from two Floodlands bottles.

Racked into two totes one with 150 lbs Twin Springs Raspberries and the other with 150 Baugher's Orchard Sour Cherries. Both frozen and thawed. Each received 10 g of HopSteiner Alpha Extract, and fresh 71B for refermentation.

Tasting Notes

Smell - Mix of fresh berries, raspberries more than cherries. Not a hugely complex funky or "Brett-forward" beer, but there is a little lemon and hay Barrel character is hidden behind the fruit as well.

Appearance - Crystal clear, brilliant red-purple. Light-pink head fizzles quickly, but stays as a thin covering.

Taste - Cherries come through more on the palate. Good fruit intensity, still really fresh/vibrant. Firm acidity, slight sharpness from the malic acid of the cherries? Again not an especially complex or funky beer, but it’s a showcase for good fruit. The Baugher's cherries without stems seems to have been a good choice. A bit sweet which lends a more Flemish Red lean rather than Lambic or Saison.

Mouthfeel - Medium-high carbonation. Medium-light body.

Drinkability - It grows on me as I drink it and my palate gets used to the acidity. Good blend of fruit, bright flavor, I just wish the base beer was a little more interesting.

Changes for Next Time - Wouldn’t mind depitted cherries to make sure we are getting good extraction.

Fruit of Many Uses

Base Beer: Belgian Pale #3

78% Murphy & Rude Virginia Pilsner

18% Murphy & Rude Wheat Malt

4% Murphy & Rude Vienna Malt

OG 1.047

.5 lbs/bbl 5-year-old Australian Summer Hop Pellets

Primary Yeast Lalvin 71-B

Microbes from Chardonnay Grape tote (originally a Bissell Brothers house souring culture they sent for the collab).

Then aged in a third-use Cabernet Sauvignon (microbes originally from Modern Times House of Sand) and Barrel #41 fourth-use merlot barrel for 11 months (microbes in barrel included East Coast Yeast Senne Valley, Bokkereyder dregs, Mad Fermentationist Saison, Casey, and Afterthought dregs)

Racked sequentially onto 150 lbs Twin Springs Raspberries, 150 Baugher's Orchard Sour Cherries, and 250 Twin Springs White Jade Nectarines.

Tasting Notes

Smell - The berry leads, more cherry than raspberry. Earthy hay, candied fruit salad. The nectarines and grapes don’t shine in the aroma, but they help to send it in a direction that isn’t one-note “berry.” Almost apricot brandy as it warms. I don’t taste anything off from the pits, seeds etc.

Appearance - Carbonation seems a little low. A hard pour results in only a two-finger white head. A few bubbles rising through the pale body. Good clarity.

Taste - Pleasantly tart lemony acidity, without being harsh. The nectarine comes through more distinctly on the palate. Finish is berry again, but light, bright, and juicy finish. Non bitterness.

Mouthfeel - Medium carbonation, could be spritzier. Smooth, no astringency. Light body, without being thin.

Drinkability - Really complex with the different fruit notes coming in and out of awareness.

Changes for Next Time - The Chardonnay is mostly lost, would be a better feature in a plain beer or maybe light dry hopping.

Let's Talk About Blending Sour Beers: Growth Rings 2023

2024-04-30T13:41:00.009-04:00

This is the second in a series of posts each covering an aspect of brewing mixed-fermentation barrel-aged beers where my opinions have changed significantly since I wrote American Sour Beers 10 years ago. Each post will focus on our process, recipe, and results for one of the beers in the Sapwood Cellars Shipping Club (includes 6 bottles, for $146, cancel anytime) - sign-ups for the first box close May 5th! This post covers blending through the lens of Growth Rings 2023 (our blend of 1-, 2-, and 3-year barrel-aged sours). If you are closer to the brewery, May 10th and 11th I'll be doing a talk and vintage sour tasting including pours of Growth Rings 2021 and 2023!

As a homebrewer, my experience with blending was limited to a handful of batches. Over the last six years I've had a hand in blending more than 70 batches of barrel-aged sour beer. So, I thought it would be valuable to give my thoughts on the process, what I've learned to do, and not to do.

Setting Yourself Up For Success

You can't blend great beer if you don't have options. Creating variety starts on brew day and continues through fermentation and aging.

Malt Bills - More so for darker sours, it's good to have options for beers that have different flavors to pull from. Even for pale beers, having different grains (wheat, oats, rye, spelt, light caramel malt etc.), and starting gravities can be valuable for creating range.

Hopping Rates - As I discussed in my previous post, hopping rate plays a large role in acidity and "funky" aromatics. Bitterness itself can be a valuable flavor in a blend, it's a flavor present in most lambics, and too often missing from American sours.

Acidity - Having "Brett only" barrels is a good way to ensure you have beer available that won't be too acidic. When a barrel starts getting too sour, we'll often keg it so it is available for blending at a low level for beers that aren't sour enough.

Barrels - A blend of "new" and well-used barrels. Early on all of our barrels were first-use (to us). As a result many of our early releases were too woody, giving "lumber aisle" vibes. Most sour beers are light and delicate and too much oak can overwhelm. At the same time, it's good to retire barrels that aren't producing spectacular beer allowing you to bring in new characterful barrels (we currently have fresh gin, Madeira, PX Sherry etc. aging). If I was starting a new barrel program, I'd soak half of the barrels slated for pale beers with multiple changes of hot water to leach out oak flavor and tannins before filling.

Microbes - It is easiest if you have the same culture in all of the beers/barrels. In that case you don't have to worry about additional attenuation after packaging. For me, it's more valuable to have a variety of microbes for different acid levels and Brett profiles for more dynamic flavor options. As time has gone on we've split the difference, pumping in some of a favorite barrel to a fresh batch, but then going into various barrels with their own cultures. We'll also pitch additional microbes if a barrel isn't headed in a good direction at 6-12 months.

Ages - It can be helpful to have the same/similar beers of various ages so you can balance flavors. We've gotten better at judging which barrels just need more time, and which are headed in a bad direction and need to be dumped. That said, I don't have as much time to taste/monitor the barrels as I should and I still "miss" some good barrels leaving them in too long until they taste oxidized or off.

The Mechanics of Blending

Think about the goals before you start. What is the concept? What other ingredients are you adding after blending? What is the target volume? Sometimes it is good to just taste barrels for inspiration, but that can be overwhelming when you have dozens of barrels to select from. I try to set a general schedule before the year starts. It keeps me on track for seasonal ingredients, sourcing barrels for finishing, and utilizing our staff/tank time rather than bunching up releases. I tend to earmark barrels as "potential" candidates for a blend, ideally twice as many barrels as a blend would require.

From there, I go to our barrel-spreadsheet (more info). I filter for beers with enough age, appropriate bases, removing barrels that are already earmarked for other projects. Lots of releases overlap, say I fill five barrels with sour red and hope to get a two-barrel blend plain and a two-barrel blend with fruit. Hopefully I have an "orphan" barrel that was passed over from last year or another similar base that didn't fit in its blend available for variety. Then I start pulling nails and tasting to gauge my options. I note barrels that need more time and those that are running out of time. Hopefully that narrows down my choices to five barrels at most for a two or three barrel blend.

Then I pull larger samples of those barrels so I have enough beer for a few blends without having to go back and pull more. When possible, I try to create full-barrel blends, although we occasionally keg-off partial barrels for future blending stock. In the same way if a blend is missing a little something, I'll take a look through our kegs and see if there is an option that satisfies the need.

I usually break down my options by acidity. If two barrels are a bit too acidic and two are not acidic enough, I'll try blending my favorite from each camp together to see where that gets me. Then swap in the other if there is something that doesn't work. Once I get a solid blend, I might go hunting for a little something extra. For example we were just blending a sour red, and ended up with a little 3+ year-aged Vin de Cereale (strong sour red) as a low-percentage malt-booster bringing perceived sweetness and more oak.

In terms of the practicalities of blending, I usually use volume. Weight works, but I tend not to worry about extreme precision because the volume in each barrel can differ by 5-10% anyway. For each blend I start with an empty cup to avoid issues with tracking when you take a sip, dose in more and then don't really know the ratio.

Finally, I write down the winning blend. When possible, I come back and taste the blend on a fresh palate later, ideally with someone who wasn't involved in the initial blend (since that is how the majority of people drinking the beer will approach it).

Blending takes time and practice, but one thing that has been immensely helpful is blending with other people. Some of my favorite collabs are sensory rather than recipe-based. There isn't often much I get out of brewing a collab beer, instead we invite in other brewers to taste through our barrels and help select a blend, brainstorm adjuncts etc. Sam, Tim, and co. from Other Half helped blend Throwing Hearts. Jennings from Pen Druid came in to blend Life is Ridiculous. Mike Thorpe from Afterthought visited last week to blend an upcoming beer with hardy kiwi and New Zealand hops. We've done similar things on the stout side with Mike Saboe from Toppling Goliath and Eric Padilla from More/Open Outcry. Heck it's just great bringing in homebrew friends with good palates to help taste barrels, bounce ideas off... and just give me an excuse to pull samples!

Recipe: Growth Rings 2023

Barrel #16

Beer: Golden Sour (Pils, 2-row, Chit, Wheat Malt, .5 lbs/bbl Aged Hops, 1.056)

Age: 16 Months

Barrel: 5th-fill Pinot Noir American Oak

Culture East Coast Yeast Flemish Ale

Notes: Rubbery funk, medium acid, bright, good

Barrel #19

Beer: Rings of Light (2-row, Chit, Malted Wheat, Unmalted Oats, 40 IBUs in Whirlpool, 1.062)

Age: 8 months

Barrel: 4th-fill Chardonnay American Oak.

Culture: Omega Brett C and Yeast Bay Amalgamation

Notes: Less acidic, funky, bright fruit, rubbery

Barrel #20

Beer: Marylandbic (Pils, Unmalted Wheat, Chit, .5 lbs/bbl 2014 Celeia pellets, 1.045)

Age: 35 months.

Barrel: 2nd-fill Chardonnay American Oak.

Culture: Omega Brett C and Yeast Bay Amalgamation (plus a house culture that was a repitch of a repitch in primary)

Notes: Loamy, a touch stale, bright lactic acid.

Barrel #62

Beer: Belgian Pale (Pilsner, Wheat Malt, Vienna, 15 IBUs Sterling First Wort, 1.048)

Age: 27 months

Barrel: 2nd-fill Cabernet Franc French Oak

Culture: SARA Saison Bernice

Notes: Sprite, tart, but not highly acidic.

Growth Rings is the rare bottle-conditioned sour that we didn't repitch with wine yeast, a good choice if you're looking to harvest bottle dregs!

Tasting Notes: Growth Rings 2023

(My personal notes from a few months ago)

Smell - Citrusy nose, apricot, hay, bright and fresh. Missing that big rubber that is present in most great lambics.

Appearance - Pale gold, clear, lots of bubbles, thick head, good retention. Great lacing.

Taste - Delicate acidity. Lemon, apricot, just a touch of rubber.

Mouthfeel - Snappy carbonation, medium-light body. Lighter bodied than a classic Gueuze.

Drinkability - In terms of drinkability, it’s my favorite recently. Lively, complex… but it isn't as gueuze-y.

Changes for Next Time - It has sort of a barrel-aged saison quality more than gueuze. Maybe that fresher whirlpool hop character from Rings of Light… that said I really like the result.

Brewing Hoppier Sours for Aging: Barrels of Rings

2024-04-18T08:50:00.003-04:00

This is the first in a series of posts each covering an aspect of brewing mixed-fermentation barrel-aged beers where my opinions have changed significantly since I wrote American Sour Beers. Each post will focus on our process, recipe, and results for one of the beers in the Sapwood Cellars Shipping Club. This one covers Barrels of Rings, aka our 40 IBU hazy pale ale (Rings of Light) fermented in barrels with house microbes, then dry hopped with Citra Cryo.

The longer I brew mixed-fermentation beers, the more I appreciate just how important the hopping rate is. Controlling lactic acid production by inhibiting lactobacillus is hops' most well-appreciated function in sour beers. Hop compounds become more effective at inhibiting Lactobacillus as the pH drops, creating a natural "limit" on their lactic acid production. What it took me a long time to appreciate was how much hop compounds (beyond IBUs) lead to a greater expression of what I think of as classic Brett "funk."

When Scott and I began the mixed-fermentation program in 2018-2019, generally our issue was beers not souring enough. I started pulling levers (lower hopping rates, higher mash temps, less attenuative primary strains etc.) By 2020-2021, we were having excessive acid production... Most non-fruited beers were dropping to a firmly-acidic 3.1-3.3 pH, while fruited beers were often difficult to drink in quantity at 3.0-3.1 pH with some dipping to "obnoxiously acidic" high-2s.

Fruit contributes simple sugars, which Lactobacillus love, and at the same time dilute the hop compounds in the beer. This can cause a precipitous pH drop. With so much beer already in barrels, my first maneuver was to begin dosing alpha acids into the beer along with fruit when there was already enough acid. We started with reduced iso-alpha-acids (e.g. tetralone/hexalone), but have moved onto Hopsteiner Alpha Extract 20% since it doesn't add perceived bitterness. About .1-.2 g per gallon stops acid production for our bacteria. These products don't significantly change the flavor or add additional aromatic complexity. As a side benefit, they enhance head retention. A small dry hop at this stage would be another option if you wanted stop acidification and add hop aromatics.

At this point we started upping the aged hop rate, or aiming for higher IBU targets when using fresh hops (~15-20 IBUs). At the same time (~2021) Scott and Ken (our head brewer) wanted to try barrel-aging more aromatically hoppy beers... I was resistant. I love hoppy-sour beers, I did a whole talk about them at the 2016 National Homebrewers Conference. Generally my approach had been to make sure the hops go into the beer as close to serving as possible (e.g., dry hop a barrel-aged sour after aging, brew a quick-turn hoppy Brett saison, add a whirlpool addition after kettle souring). I'd tasted too many barrel-soured IPAs and pale ales from great breweries that smelled like "old hoppy beer." That said, Ken and Scott convinced me! At our scale it is a relatively low risk to divert a few barrels of pale ale to see what happens.

We're already "aggressive" with our measures against oxygen pick-up (purging barrels with carbon dioxide before filling, purging the barrel-tool between each fill, purging the bottles before filling etc.), but when we fill barrels with pale ale wort we pull out all the tricks. Most importantly, we selected barrels that could be refilled without rinsing, leaving several gallons of "house culture" at the bottom of each. Our goal was to start the secondary fermentation as quickly as possible to protect the delicate hop compounds. I was amazed how good the resulting beer tasted!

What has really intrigued me is that the hoppier bases have almost universally produced finished beers I'd describe as more Brett-forward (earthy, funky, fruity, horse blanket). What I don't know is why! In American Sour Beers I cited research that Brett can free glycosides in hops, so that could explain the fruity. Maybe hops are just inhibiting Lactobacillus, giving the Brett a healthier environment (in lambics Brett tends to thrive before Pediococcus dramatically lowers the pH). Maybe I'm just being fooled and higher hopping rates (aged or fresh) are adding key compounds that I associate with the "funk" in a Cantillon, Orval (and many of my favorite American mixed-ferms)! These days our typical hopping rate is .5 lbs/bbl of aged hops at the start of the boil, and .5 lbs/bbl or fresh low alpha-acid hops in the whirlpool.

Barrels of Rings is one of the bottles included with the first shipment of the Sapwood Cellars Shipping Club. It started as Rings of Light, brewed summer 2022, racked into barrels after primary fermentation, but before dry hopping. After 10 months of aging, we transfer directly from the two wine barrels into our blending tank (purged with 5.5 pounds of our selected Citra Cryo already in there). We agitated/roused and allowed to settle for a couple days, dropping the hops. Then we primed with sugar and rehydrated wine yeast (as we do for most of our barrel-aged sours) and partially carbonated the beer. As with the barrel fill, we're relying on CO2 purging of the bottles and the rapid refermentation to scavenge oxygen and preserve hop aromatics.

Recipe: Barrels of Rings

OG: 1.063

65% Briess Brewer's 2-row

14% Great Western Malted White Wheat

13% Grain Millers Flaked Oats

8% Best Chit Malt

IBUs: 40

.5 lbs/bbl Meridian @ Whirlpool (212F)

1 lb/bbl New York Cascade @ Whirlpool (180F)

Bravo Salvo Hop Extract @ Whirlpool (180F)

Fermentation with Omega Cosmic Punch (the barrel sheet below is incorrect)

FG (Primary) 1.022

Brewed 8/5/22. Barrels filled 8/11/22

Barrel #6: Fifth-fill Chambourcin red wine barrel that previously held our original barrel-aged pale ale, Measure Twice. That barrel was started with dregs from our collab with Free Will (Erma Extra), but along the way it was filled with bases that had dregs in primary from various American saisons (Casey and Holy Mountain).

Barrel #125: Second-fill Chardonnay white wine barrel that previously held a cider fermented with the Bootleg Biology Biology Mad Fermentationist Saison (plus we added the dregs from a stellar bottle of Barrique Wet Hop Reserve after filling).

6/21/23 116 gallons of beer from the two barrels transferred onto 5.5 pounds of 2022 Citra Cryo. 1.5 oz/gallon.

Carbonated to 2.05 vol, reyeasted with Premier Cuvee (rehydrated on a stir-plate with StartUp Nutrient), primed with enough glucose to add 1.1 vol of CO2 (~3.1 vol total in bottle).

Final pH: 3.65

Final Gravity 1.009

7.1% ABV.

Tasting Notes: Barrels of Rings

(My personal notes from a few months ago)

Smell - Nice blend of citrus (orange) and earthy-Bretty-funk. Still really fresh, no oxidative or old-hop aromatics. Really varied nose with a little pine sap, hay, and melon. Another hoppy base that got funkier than most of our bases.

Appearance - Big dense white head, good retention. Light haze, very pale yellow. Attractive.

Taste - Light lemony tartness, but not sour-sour. Very saison-y. Some bitterness, but it doesn’t clash with the light bitterness.

Mouthfeel - A touch of astringency. Great sptrizy carbonation. Medium-light body.

Drinkability - Really nice. The bitterness does give it a different impression than a classic low-bitterness sour base. More saison-like.

Changes for Next Time - Really good, not much to change on this one. Gin barrels would be fun.

When visiting Epochal Barrel Fermented Ales in Scotland last year I was blown-away by how by how good (owner/brewer) Gareth Young's wild ales were aged on whole hops in the barrels for the entire secondary fermentation. I really enjoyed the first beer we did with it, Violet You're Turning Violet (Mosaic in the barrel, finished with a blend of wild and cultivated blueberries). It seems like a good option especially if you want variety in the hop intensity of a base, e.g., start with a more moderate hopped base and add hops to some barrels for blending options.

Did I Wreck Sour Beer in America?

2024-04-12T07:50:00.002-04:00

My book, American Sour Beers, is turning ten next month! I wrote it from the perspective (and experience) of a homebrewer. I wanted to experiment and learn. I really didn't know much about brewing commercially, creating consistent blends, adapting recipes as a barrel program matured, developing flavors that would sell etc. Looking back I have to ask, did my book help launch 1,000 barrel programs, without providing the knowledge brewers actually needed to succeed?

Over the last decade American craft brewing had an explosion of breweries ramping up barrel-aged sour production, followed by a pretty rapid decline (including multiple mid-sized breweries closing their programs and sour-focused breweries closing). Part of that is the inherently less-predictable nature of mixed-fermentation (when you order a cherry sour beer, what are you expecting? Kriek, cherry juice, cherry vinegar etc.). Compare that to a bourbon-barrel vanilla-bean stout where you have a pretty good idea of what the intent was. I suspect at least part of it was the oversaturation of the market combined with the high prices.

Despite brewing my first sour beer in 2006, becoming a brewery consultant in 2011, writing a book in 2014, and opening a brewery in 2018... I haven't been consistently happy with the barrel-aged mixed-fermentations I made until the last couple years. I certainly never released a beer that I thought was bad, but there were certainly had batches that were too sour, muddled, under/over carbonated, or just didn't "pop." During that time we've also released some amazing beers that I still love!

At Sapwood Cellars we've relied on our local club members, and the people who walk in the door to buy ~10,000 bottles of barrel-aged sour beer a year. That may sound like a lot, but it's less than 5% of our production (and we're a pretty small brewery). There really hasn't been much interest in barrel-aged sour bottles in our limited distribution range. They tend to be beers that sell best when you can explain them directly to the drinker, rather than just have them sitting on a shelf! If only there was a way I could talk directly to beer drinkers interested in sour beer...

Rather than bury the lead more than I already have, Sapwood Cellars barrel-aged mixed-fermentation sours are now available for shipping within much of America through a Membership Club administered by Tavour! Shipping is available to: WA, CA, OR, NM, NV, CO, MN, NY, DC, CT, NE, MA, FL, PA, NH, NJ, ID, TX, KS, IN, WI, MO, IA, IL, MI, ND, VA, RI, NC, SC, and MD.

The first installment of the club is $146 (including shipping) for one 500 mL bottle each of six beers:

Growth Rings 2023: Three-year-blend of barrel-aged Sours, essentially our cuvee of bases, barrels, and microbes showing off our house character. This one isn't refermented with wine yeast, so the dregs would be a good option if you are looking for microbes! It was the second highest-rated "Gueuze" on Untappd in 2023!

Barrels of Rings: Our pale ale base, mixed-fermented in wine barrels and then dry hopped right before bottling. Citrusy-funky with restrained acidity.

Jammiest Bit: Our homage to Hommage, a barrel-aged sour on loads of sour pie cherries and red raspberries. Fruity, funky, tart etc.

Botanicia: A blend of pale sours aged in gin barrels that we then infused with dried limes and quinine. A weird play on a gin-and-tonic... but with a lot more acidity and funk!

Elliptical Orbit 2023: A continuation of the "Dark Funky Saison" series still with my original collaborator and homebrew buddy Alex. For this one he roasted Geisha coffee beans and we infused the barrel-aged dark sour with Geisha cascara (dried coffee cherries).

Fruit of Many Uses: We sequentially racked the same barrel-aged tart/funky base onto second-use Chardonnay wine grapes, cherries, raspberries, and white nectarines. All of the fruit was whole/local.

Over the next couple weeks I'll be posting my detailed tasting notes on each of the beers, along with recipes, lessons learned, and suggestions for brewing something similar at home! I'll repeat for each club release, assuming enough people sign-up for the club to make it viable.

Over the last five years it isn't "one simple trick" we learned that improved our beer. It's the accumulation of 100 little things from ingredient selection, to blending, to process refinement, to equipment that we've figured out. It's sitting down with each beer, drinking, thinking, taking detailed notes, and iterating. So much of it is not doing it by myself, having Scott, Ken, and Spencer to push to do things I wouldn't have (Botanica was Ken's baby, and Barrels of Rings was Scott's). Both are delicious, and they are certainly beers I would not have brewed if it was all up to me!

Are Thiols a Scam? Thiolized Yeast, Phantasm, and the Rise of Designer Beer

2023-05-16T08:42:00.014-04:00

Thiols are the coolest thing in brewing hoppy beers since the invention of dry hopping. It seems like almost every collab Sapwood Cellars has been invited to brew over the last 18 months ends up "Thiolized": 3S4MP (Cosmic Punch IPA with Phantasm and Nelson Sauvin at Fidens), Cone Concentrate (Cosmic Punch DIPA with Simcoe at Other Half DC), Celestial Paradox (London Tropics IPA with Strata/Galaxy/Citra/Simcoe at Toppling Goliath), Yasokeee (Helio Gazer DIPA with Peacherine, Hydra, and Phantasm at Cushwa), and most recently Heisenberg (Helio Gazer DIPA with Galaxy/Nelson at Commonwealth).

So why all of the excitement from our fellow craft brewers? Obviously many of the collab requests are due to Scott's writing about and advocacy for thiols, but are they just something new that will be passé soon, or are these strains here to stay?

What Are Thiols?

Thiols are sulfur-containing compounds that are often potent aromatics. The ones brewers are excited about are tropical, winey, and citrusy, while other thiols are intensely unpleasant with aromas of garlic or rotten eggs... which is why the thiol mercaptan is added to natural gas to alert people to leaks. The "skunky" aroma of light-struck beer is also 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol.

Unlike many other beer aromatics that require concentrations in the ppm (parts per million) or ppb (parts per billion) many thiols have an aroma threshold in the range of 5-70 ppt (parts per trillion). This means that it doesn't take much of them to be apparent, but also means that it doesn't require "high" concentrations to become dominant.

In terms of positive beer and wine aromatics, the thiols that get the most attention are 4MMP, 3MH, 3MHA, and 3S4MP. These have perceptions that range from passionfruit, to grapefruit, to rhubarb. These are the intense aromatics that give New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc wines their distinct aromas and are found free at low-levels in many New Zealand hops (as well as some other varieties from around the world).

Most of the thiols found in hops, malt, and other botanicals are bound and thus not active aromatically. Enzymes are required to free them. There are wine strains available capable of this, but getting those genes into brewer's yeast requires more work.

Where Do Thiols Come From?

Bound thiols are found in both malt and hops, but levels vary widely. The bond in need of breaking comes in two "flavors" Cysteinylated (Cys) and Glutathionylated (Glu). The vast majority (90%+) in both malt and hops is Glu. The IRC7 gene in certain wine strains and Omega's Cosmic Punch can only work on the less common Cys. As a result, mash hops are most potentially beneficial for Cosmic Punch, as the enzymes in the mash (especially in the acid-protein rest temperature range) can help convert Glu to Cys. Luckily some less expensive hop varieties have the highest levels of bound thiols. We've used Saaz, Cascade, and Calypso with good results.

The more intense strains like Berkeley Yeast Tropics line and Omega's Helio Gazer, Star Party, and Lunar Crush can simply be added to a standard recipe with or without whirlpool hops. Rather than having more copies of the IRC7 gene, they have a wholly different gene which can free Glu-thiols directly. The IRC7 gene in Cosmic Punch is "sourced" from yeast, while patB Omega uses in the more assertive strains is from a bacteria (if transgenic CRISPR/Cas9 gene modification is a step too far for you). We fermented a kettle sour which only had a small dose of hexalone (isomerized hop extract for head retention) with London Tropics. The result was intensely passion-fruity, so much so that it could almost pass a fruit beer.

GM (genetically modified) yeast strains aren't allowed in commercial beers in many countries (e.g., Canada, New Zealand). As a result there are labs working with wild isolates capable of freeing thiols for co-fermentations (e.g., CHR Hansen - it is primarily marketed for NA beers) and breeding strains with heightened thiol freeing capabilities (e.g., Escarpment). Omega initially worked on yeast breeding between English ale and a wine strain capable of freeing thiols... our trials with it (Designer Baby) were interesting, but had too much of the wine strain's idiosyncrasies present (poor flocculation especially).

Pros & Cons of Thiol-Expressing Yeast

Pros:
-Intense aromatics that are otherwise impossible to achieve from hops, malt, and yeast
-Thiols have incredibly low aroma thresholds... measured in ppt (parts per trillion)
-Thiols are "free" no expensive hops or fruit required
-Thiols may help increase shelf-life by scavenging oxygen

Cons:
-Higher perceived "sulfur" aromatics are frequent in thiol-freeing strains
-Some brewers/consumers/countries prefer to avoid GM ingredients
-Thiols can be "one note"... is it really that different from adding a jar of passion fruit extract?
-Repitching the yeast doesn't make as much sense if you also want to brew English Ales, Porters/Stouts etc.

More isn't (always) Better

Initially there was a focus on maximizing thiol concentration. This could include colder fermentation temperatures, mash hops, and engineering strains with more assertive genes. Like most aspects of brewing (or cooking) maximizing a single flavor compound doesn't usually result in the best overall flavor or balance.

Thiols aren't typically a "primary" aromatic in beer, so a beer with over-the-top thiol concentration without anything to play off of can taste artificial. On the other hand, some of our heavily dry hopped DIPAs have tested at over 100X the flavor threshold for 3MH and still weren't the primary aroma thanks to competition from the "traditional" hop aromatics. From those test, I wouldn't worry about dry hopping removing all of the thiols.

As a general rule, I'd suggest using a more restrained approach to thiols in lighter/cleaner/simpler beers. It doesn't take much to add a unique twist to a lager or American wheat, where a double-dry-hopped DIPA or fruit beer may benefit from a much higher amount. In the end it's about your palate and goals for a beer.

In my experience expressing thiols doesn't make every hoppy beer better. They add a distinct note that can greatly enhance the perception of passionfruit-type aromatics. That is a wonderful contribution when you are leaning into those flavors, but can be distracting or muddle other flavors. For example, I love the "mango popsicle" aroma of great Simcoe. However, with one of the intense strains like London Tropics or Helio Gazer in an all-Simcoe beer can become more generically "tropical" rather than varietal "mango." On the other hand, when dry hopping with passion-fruity Galaxy, or brewing with actual passionfruit the thiol note helps to enhance the existing aromatics.

Phantasm

Hand-in-hand with thiol-expressing yeast goes Phantasm. It is essentially the dried and powdered remnants of the highest-thiol New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc grapes. As a result it comes with a high price-tag of ~$35/lb. It really doesn't smell like much before fermentation. Added to the whirlpool it adds a huge amount of bound thiols for the yeast to work on.

During fermentation I detect a distinct "white grape" flavor and aroma that I don't get from other thiol-expressing ferments that rely on grain and hops alone for bound precursors. A lot of this drops out with the yeast however and the finished beers are rarely as distinct. To my palate the added expense is hard to justify in a highly-dry-hopped beer where the thiols are competing against other big aromatics. Unless you lean into those aromatics with a hop like Nelson Sauvin. I like Phantasm best when it is paired with actual white wine grapes, or in a simple base where it can star.

We haven't used Berkely Yeast's "Thiol Boost" additive yet... but I'm just not that excited about a 15X increase on the already intense London Tropics level of 3MH. I'd be interested in herbs or additives that could push other unique thiol aromatics that we aren't getting from grain/hops.

My Favorite Thiolized Batches

At Sapwood Cellars, we've brewed a few dozen batches between Cosmic Punch, London Tropics, Lunar Crush, and experimental isolates. I've enjoyed most of them, but a handful stand-out as beers I loved!

Cosmic Rings: Galaxy and Citra is one of our favorite combinations... but we have had a difficult time sourcing great Galaxy (that doesn't taste like honey roasted peanuts). This all-Citra double-dry-hopped pale ale starts with New Zealand Taiheke (Cascade) in the mash and kettle. It's one of our favorite whirlpool hops because it is low alpha acid and has a beautiful tropical aroma... not to mention a lower price compared to other New Zealand varieties like Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka. Then we ferment with Omega's Cosmic Punch which brings some tropical aromatics without becoming distracting or artificial. Finally we dry hop with Citra and Citra Cryo at a combined 3 lbs/bbl.

Tropical Pop: Kettle sour fermented with Berkeley Yeast London Tropics along with passion fruit and mango purees. Passion fruit is expensive, fermenting with London Tropics boosted the passion fruit aroma allowing us to use less without sacrificing the aroma intensity.

Field Learning: As a homebrewer I loved being able to dump a bottle of thiol-rich New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc into a keg of mixed-ferm saison. That wouldn't be legal commercially, but what we did for this collab with Bissell Brothers was to brew a restrained base with Hallertau Blanc in the mash and Phantasm in the whirlpool and age it in fresh Sauvignon Blanc barrels along with Bissell's house culture. After a year we added fresh Chardonnay grapes from Crow Vineyards here in Maryland. The tropical notes from the thiols survived barrel aging and gave the beer depth we wouldn't have gotten from grapes and barrel alone.

Takeaways

Are thiols a scam? No, but they also aren't an innovation that fundamentally changes what it takes to make a delicious beer. Consider a thiol-freeing yeast when additional passionfruit-type aromatics will enhance your beer. Don't worry about maximizing the thiols unless you they will be competing against other strong aromatics.

I suspect that this is just the lead in to even more exotic genetically modified yeast strains (we have a pitch of Berkeley's Sunburst Chico which is modified to express high levels of pineapple-y ethyl butyrate). If you can produce a flavor compound without the cost, environmental impact, variability of growing it I suspect the economic pressures will be too great! That said, making delicious beers isn't about maximizing one or two compounds (in the same way that vanilla flavoring is inexpensive, but doesn't fully replace the depth and complexity of real vanilla beans).

Lessons from Five Years of Bugs, Barrels, and Brewing

2023-04-25T14:32:00.002-04:00

This July marks five years since I left my day job with the federal government to brew full-time. We filled our first barrel with mixed-fermentation saison before opening the tasting room at Sapwood Cellars. Since then, we are up to 80 oak barrels with a dedicated suite for mixed-fermentation. So, I thought it would be a good time to sit down and reflect on the lessons that Scott and I have learned over the years! The things we got right, the things we got wrong, and where we are going from here!

Luckily, we've had a pretty good run so far! We've cultivated a great group of supporters in our Wood Club. Neologism (gin-barrel-aged Cascade/Simcoe Cryo dry-hopped pale sour) was named one of Craft Beer & Brewing's Top-20 beers of 2022 by way of winning a massive blind tasting. Despite the pandemic we've been able to modestly expand (production, staff, and space)! We're even shipping beers around the US through Tavour!

I recently realized that Google discontinued Feedburner in 2021... which is why you haven't gotten an email from me in a while. I've changed The Mad Fermentationist over to a new email service, so if you've signed up you should get emails for new posts going forward! If you want more emails from me, I write the near-weekly Sapwood Newsletter (with details on new beers often including info on ingredients, process, and equipment)!

The Things We Got Right

Diverse Microflora - It is certainly simpler to have a single "house" culture. It allows for relatively worry-free blending, but doesn't leave as much room for unique flavors. Maintaining multiple cultures, we have to worry about the microbes from one barrel over-attenuating in the bottle if they are more attenuative than others in the blend. However, the variety of flavors expressed and the options for blending is worth the effort at our scale. We've been even happier since we started selecting our favorite barrels and using them to inoculate subsequent batches. Now we can select which character fits a pale sour vs. a sour red.

Last week we blended our second batch of Growth Rings (three year blend). To ensure all the microbes have time to get to know each other, we blended the four barrels (all different pale base beers) into a tote. They'll sit there for a couple months to ensure the gravity is stable before priming and bottling.

Balancing Planning and Creativity - We started 2023 with a rough timeline of the 20 or so barrel-aged mixed-ferm we'll release. However, when we fill barrels there generally isn't a specific plan for which barrel will be in which beer. Pale, wine-barrel-aged beer can be delightful on it's own, or serve as a great base of fruit, herbs, or dry hopping. When we taste them, we get to decide what will make the best possible beer. However, it's also nice to have unique bases/barrels earmarked for a particular purpose. Some examples of those include Opulence (sour red with dried sour cherries in the bourbon and red wine barrels), a Brett'd Belgian Tripel in Calvados (apple brandy), or Port barrels for There Are No Edges (Vin de Céréale).

Tracking Barrels - Using Google Sheets has worked out well for us. I can sort based on fill date, final gravity, base beer etc. It allows me to sit on my couch at home and look at what beers we have in need of fruit, blending, packaging etc. Barrels still fall through the cracks (nothing is more heartbreaking than tasting a barrel that is old/stale and seeing a note about how good it was six months ago). Sometimes a beer is delicious, it just doesn't fit into a blend.

Blending with Others - Whether it is our tasting room manager (Spencer), Lead Brewer (Ken), homebrewing friends, fellow brewers (e.g., the brewers from Other Half for a collab) etc. Tasting barrels with other people helps improve your palate, riff on ideas, and make more broadly appealing results. We all have flavor "blind spots" and it is a good idea to have other people looking too. It's fun to riff off other people's ideas and come up with flavor combinations that neither of you would have made on your own.

Packaging - Our general approach to packaging has been a big success... once we started measuring the dissolved CO2 in the beer rather than relying on time/temperature/pressure. We blend barrels or transfer fruited beers to our blending tank and cold crash. The day before bottling we'll push in sugar (boiled in water) along with Premier Cuvee champagne yeast (rehydrated with a small amount of Start-Up/GoFerm nutrient). We then carbonate the beer to ~2 vol of CO2, with the sugar and yeast taking the beer the rest of the way. We fill on a bottler (XpressFill) that purges and counter-pressure fills. So far it's resulted in relatively quick/clean refermentations with reliable carbonation.

The Things We Got Wrong

Not Allocating Time - It is easy to put-off barrel-aged beers for more pressing concerns. When there are DIPAs to dry hop, Pilsners to can, and excises taxes to exercise the sour beers are often pushed to the side. It's rare that a week or two of aging in one direction or another makes a dramatic difference... but it's hard to get the most out of a barrel program if it is always at the bottom of the priority list. We're getting better at it, but I still wish from the start I'd blocked off a specific time/day each week to taste barrels, trial blends, source ingredients, prop microbes etc.

Over-Correcting - Initially we weren't getting enough acidity in some of our beers, so we started pulling levers... colder rinsing barrels, lower hopping rates etc. Then our beers started becoming too sour, so we started veering back in the other direction. Managing a barrel program is like driving a cruise ship, it is difficult to pivot quickly! It's difficult to step back and tell if there is something causing one specific batch from being too sour (or not sour enough) or if there is a systemic issue.

I think we would have been well served to do a better mix starting early (some barrels cold or no-rise, more with just Brett etc.). This would have given us more options when it came to blending over- or under-soured beers.

Appreciating the Impact of Fruit On Acidity - Early on to help out some of those under-acidified beers, we went onto fruit. I was surprised how little additional acidity they picked up from refermentation. Sure adding a really acidic fruit (e.g., black currants for Fellow Feeling) contributed acidity, but just refermenting on wine grapes or peaches did not. However, as our cultures "matured" we suddenly had beers dropping from a tart pH of 3.5 to an obnoxiously-acidic 3.0 after going onto the fruit (2.8 pH was the lowest I measured). That's despite pitching rehydrated wine yeast to ensure a healthy and quick refermentation.

I thought maybe our resident lactic acid bacteria were becoming more hop tolerant, and the dilution of the beer with fruit was allowing them to kick into action. To test this we began adding a small amount of hop extract with the fruit (we use a 20% alpha extract from Hopsteiner). Our fruited beers stopped dropping pH nearly as much, and as an added benefit the head retention improved considerably.

Hot Side Hopping - I didn't appreciate how much of the classic funky lambic/saison profile originates with the hops. While we've always used a "restrained" dose of aged hops at the start of the boil (~.5 lbs/bbl), that just wasn't enough to give the beers the aromatic depth I was looking for. Recently we've been experimenting with a similar size whirlpool addition of cold-stored hops. So far the results are promising! I should have noticed that many of my favorite homebrewed Brett Saisons had big whirlpool additions and/or dry hopping... but those were all relatively quick turn-around and not barrel-aged. I'm glad Scott and Ken pushed to age some of our pale ales (pre-dry hopping) in barrels, an idea I wasn't excited about... but the results have been really delicious!

Where We Are Headed

Barrel-aged sour beer seems to be a wide/shallow market at the moment. The people who love them are still searching them out, but the average beer drinker seems to have moved on to less "challenging" more "reliable" styles. It's hard to know how much the rapid expansion of the segment played into this loss of interest. I've heard of quite a few breweries down-sizing or eliminating barrel-aged sour beers... Luckily we still have 150 people in our Wood Club, which is a great way for us to get these beers into the hands of our biggest supporters and a base-level of sales for eight releases a year. We're aiming to make our mixed-ferm beers more "delicious" the sorts of beers that people want to drink a whole bottle of, not just drink an ounce or two at a share.

However, as we've ramped up the mixed-ferm bottle release schedule (2019 - 8, 2020 -11, 2021 - 13, 2022 - 16, and hopefully ~20 in 2023) we occasionally have bottles to spare. Rather than distribute them locally, we've partnered with Tavour (which ships to many states). They just released Homegrown Rule, a "Marylanbic" base with homegrown lemon verbena (from my yard) and pineapple sage (from Ken's garden). It's tart and snappy, with plenty of our house microbe character, augmented by the citrusy-green notes of the herbs.

Best Hops According to Untappd

2022-11-14T09:27:00.026-05:00

Our batch analysis/QC at Sapwood Cellars is pretty basic. Mostly it's me finding time each weekend to taste a recent release (ideally side-by-side a comparable example from another brewery). I write up tasting notes, include feedback I've gotten from other people, and recipe/process tweaks for next batch.
Part of my routine is to scroll through Untappd to see if I can spot any common threads to the compliments or complaints... but I don't put a huge amount of stock in the average score (see this post).

Blind rating by a skilled tasting panel is the gold standard... but having a large/diverse group of beer drinkers give you feedback has value as well! With four years of Untappd scores for our IPAs at my disposal, I thought it would be interesting to see which hops "the beer drinking public" preferred in Sapwood Cellars IPAs and DIPAs!

Cheater Hops IPAs

We started this series of IPAs when we opened to showcase our favorite hop varieties. We recently released #22 (Citra-Motueka). All of the batches were 6.5-7.5% ABV, with similar malt bills (American pale barley, chit, wheat, and oats), fermented with an English-leaning yeast, and dry-hopped post-crash at 3-4 lbs/bbl. The table below is the average Untappd score of all batches dry hopped with the variety listed.

Hop	Average
Motueka	4.221
Nelson	4.190
Azacca	4.188
Citra	4.177
Riwaka	4.169
Amarillo	4.163
Simcoe	4.162
Galaxy	4.155
Mosaic	4.144
Columbus	4.129
Hydra	4.122
Vic Secret	4.122
Strata	4.107

Seven of these varieties were only in one beer (Amarillo, Azacca, Columbus, Strata, Vic Secret, Hydra, Riwaka). So it is difficult to tease out if their score is a result of the hop or the context. See the table in the following section for a larger sample set.

I wouldn't have guessed that Motueka would be the most popular compared to the likes of Nelson, Galaxy, Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe! We've had hit-or-miss results with Motueka overall, with most of the hits coming from Freestyle Hops. We've gotten a few lots from other growers that have been too herbal/spicy without the bright lemon-lime note I enjoy.

I really like Hydra as a "less risky" alternative to Galaxy. It has similar passionfruit-gum aromatics without the dried, peanut-shell notes I too often smell from Australian hops. The lone batch of Cheater Hops with Hydra (#18) also included Vic Secret and Galaxy. Leaning into that tropical flavor didn't provide enough complexity to me, and it didn't score particularly well.

All IPAs and DIPAs

The table below include all 65 "big batch" IPAs and DIPAs we've released that don't contain adjuncts (although I did include Phantasm beers). These are diverse in terms of recipe construction, alcohol strength, and dry hopping rate. As a result, the scores are a bit more prone to bias compared to the Cheater Hops data set.

Hop	Average
Galaxy	4.220
Hallertau Blanc	4.220
Cashmere	4.217
Nelson	4.203
Motueka	4.186
Mosaic	4.186
Citra	4.185
Simcoe	4.178
Azacca	4.157
Riwaka	4.150
Amarillo	4.141
Vic Secret	4.131
Taiheke	4.130
Columbus	4.129
Strata	4.113
Hydra	4.096
Talus	4.090
Sabro	4.075
Lotus	4.040
Idaho Gem	4.010
Lemondrop	4.010
Sultana	3.990

Again some of the varieties near the top of the list are expected (Galaxy and Nelson), but who would guess Hallertau Blanc or Cashmere? The issue with this data set is that we don't brew beers randomly... every batch with Hallertau Blanc also included Nelson and/or Mosaic as part of our "Dragon" series of rye IPAs and DIPAs. Cashmere is mostly used in a specific base (Exaggerated Truth/Understated Lies) that is sweeter and extra-fruity thanks to a small percentage of hefeweizen yeast. We should probably try other hops in that base, and Cashmere in other bases to gauge the response!

Pairing Hops

For some batches you'd expect to see a high rating due to pairing two great hops together (e.g., Nelson/Galaxy or Mosaic/Citra). Both varieties score well across all our beers, so no surprise combing them results in a well-rated IPA. More interesting is sorting by the average standard deviation for the hops included. This shows which combinations rated higher than expected given the average scores for those hops across all beers. Snip Snap (Citra/Galaxy), Cheater Hops #22 (Citra/Motueka), Shard Blade (Mosaic/Galaxy), Cheater Hops #13 (Mosaic/Simcoe), and The Dragon (Nelson Sauvin/Mosaic/Hallertau Blanc) were all in the top-10 "overachievers." These hop blends follow different approaches either "leaning into" a particular flavor (fruity, or winey) or balancing fruity with a danker variety.

Rounding out the top-10 are two all-Simcoe (Cheater Hops #12 and Drenched in Green), two all-Mosaic (Fundle Bundle and TDH Trial #1), and an all-Nelson beer (3S4MP). Certainly a sign that these hops can shine alone compared to Citra and Motueka which are highly rated in blends, but haven't exceled in single-hop beers (despite our best efforts). Of course you need a great lot of hops for this to work; the bottom-10 also includes single-hop beers featuring: Simcoe (Cheater Hops #9), Nelson Sauvin (Cheater Hops #11), and Mosaic (Fumble Bumble)!

Two beers with Galaxy and Nelson (Cheater X and X2) each had a standard deviation close to 0. They still rate well, but no better or worse than expected across all beers with Nelson or Galaxy.
Surprisingly three of the bottom four included three varieties Cheater Hops #7 (Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic) Cheater Hops #6 (Motueka, Mosaic, Simcoe) False Peak (Idaho 7, Sultana, Citra). Blending hops can create a generic "hoppiness." These beers may have been missing a distinct "wow" aroma for people to grab onto.

Take Aways

The high/low scores for different batches brewed with the same single hop variety really drives home how unreliable this data likely is. Without multiple batches hopped with the same hop combination, it is impossible to say with certainty if a beer scored well because of aromatic synergy or a delicious lot of hops. Luckily several of the top-rated combinations are beers we have brewed multiple times.

The data does suggest to me that using one or two varieties for the dry hop is the best bet for making the most appealing IPA unless you have something very specific in mind. Often when breweries use a large number of hop varieties in a beer it is to promote consistency (batch-to-batch and year-to-year). It would be interesting to expand the data set to include beers from other breweries. That would produce data that is less specific to our particular brewing approach, hop sourcing, and customers' palates.

Help Provide Data

If you are interested in trying our beers for yourself... We've been direct-shipping Sapwood beers within Maryland for awhile, but if you live elsewhere in the US and are interested in trying our beers, we sent our first pallet (Cheater Hops #22 and TDH Pillowfort) to Tavour. They direct-ship to about half the states in the country. Here's the link for the app to notify you when they are available.

Small Craft Brewery Yeast Management

2022-11-05T10:17:00.010-04:00

When it comes to brewing delicious beer, there are few aspects more important than the yeast. A healthy fermentation allows the malt, hops, and adjuncts to shine. Pitching the right amount of healthy cells helps ensure that the finished beer has the intended alcohol, expected residual sweetness, and appropriate yeast character.

Over the last four years at Sapwood Cellars we've slowly improved our yeast handling. We've noticed improved fermentation consistency, and better tasting beers. Most of our process is excessive for a homebrewer, but it might give you some ideas!

Harvesting Yeast

We harvest yeast from moderate gravity beers when possible as these cells are less stressed and healthier as a result. Our general rhythm is to brew a pale ale with a fresh pitch, and harvest from that tank for an IPA and DIPA the following week. Once the pale ale fermentation is complete (repeated gravity readings, and no diacetyl or acetaldehyde sensory) we can and soft-crash to 56-58F (13-14C). Cold and dissolved CO2 encourage the yeast to settle out. Specific temperature and time are strain and tank dependent, but that works for most of the English-leaning strains we use (Boddington's, Conan, Whitbread, and the Thiolized-variants).

Once the beer has been cold for 24 hours, we attach a 1/2 bbl brink to the bottom of the tank and pasteurize through the line and brink with 180F (82C) water from our on-demand. 25 minutes hot ensures there aren't any stray microbes that will be passed onto the subsequent batches. After pushing out the water with CO2 pressure we spray the brink with cold water then pressurize it and the tank to ~10 PSI.

We then dump about a gallon (4L) from the T until the yeast looks good (creamy, off-white) and then begin collecting into the brink. You don't need to dump a large volume of yeast. By keeping steady pressure on the tank and slowly releasing pressure on the brink through the valve at the top we ensure that the yeast won't come out of the cone too quickly (which could punch through pulling in more beer than yeast) and won't foam up in the brink. It takes 10-15 minutes to fill the brink. Usually we are able to collect 110-130 lbs (50-60 kg) before yeast starts coming out the top of the brink.

We collect yeast before dry hopping to avoid having hops mixed in with the yeast. We also prefer the "less rough" flavor we achieve by dry hopping cold. If you dry hop early-mid fermentation and want to harvest, drop as much of the hops out as you can before crashing and harvesting.

Yeast Storage

Whenever possible we pitch within 72 hours of harvest. Larger yeast cultures generate more heat and thus tend to lose viability more rapidly. Store the yeast as cold as possible, which for us is ~36F (2C) in our walk-in. Ideally that would be closer to 32F (0C) to further slow its metabolism. Shake twice a day to dissipate hot-spots and vent down the pressure to knock-out CO2. If storing the yeast for more than a few days, attach a blow-off line to prevent pressure from building.

There are studies about various additives for maintaining high yeast viability. We've added phosphate buffer to prevent a drastic pH drop. It's difficult to tell from a single data point, but viability dropped from 95% to 89% after a week of storage. We've seen closer to 10% reductions the handful of times we've stored yeast that long previously.

We generally won't harvest and repitch beyond three generations (although recently we went to five). That's because with our limited number of tanks, variety of yeast strains, and canning schedule we'd eventually have to hold onto yeast for a couple of weeks before pitching or harvest from a strong beer.

Determining Cell Count and Viability

There are plenty of successful brewers who pitch a standard weight by barrel/gravity, but knowing how many live cells you actually have is a great way to improve consistency. It's especially valuable if you use a variety of strains or want to bring in a new strain. Our harvests of the same strain can vary by as much as three times in terms of live cells per g of slurry (~.5-1.5 billion cells). The cost of all of the equipment required is ~$500, less than a single commercial 10 bbl yeast pitch from some labs.

Start by shaking the brink to homogenize the culture. Then run a cup of yeast out, dump it (to avoid counting the cells packed around the port) and then pull a sample. The next step is to dilute the culture to a "workable" concentration - 1:100 for us. Too many cells packed together makes for a culture that is impossible/laborious to count, while too few raises the chances luck will throw-off the count. For a long time I diluted by volume, performing two sequential 10X dilutions with a micropipette. This had two drawbacks. First getting an accurate volume of yeast slurry is tricky because it is foamy and has small bits of trub that can plug-up the pipette. Second, we pitch by weight, so there was always some estimation when it came to converting the volume to a weight or the extra step of determining the physical density of the slurry by mixing with water in a graduated cylinder on a scale. What we do now is dilute by weight, which gives us cells per gram rather than cells per milliliter.

Our scale is accurate to .2 g, so weighing 1 g of yeast into 99 g of water has a ~20% margin of error. As a result I do 490 g of water with 5 g of the yeast slurry. This reduces the maximum margin of error to ~4%. After pouring the diluted culture back and forth to mix, I take 9.9 mL of the diluted culture with the micropipette and add .1 mL of a stock dye solution of Erythrosin B and phosphate buffer (1 g in 50mL of buffer). This results in a total dilution of 100X. You could go even further, a 10X dilution by weight (50 g yeast with 450 g of water) followed by a 10X dilution by volume (1 mL of the diluted culture with 8.9 mL water and .1 g of dye). Live cells are able to expel the Erythrosin B so they won't be stained, meaning any red yeast cells are dead. You can use a variety of other stains, but Erythrosin B is a food coloring and much safer to handle than methylene blue or trypan blue. Here's a post from Escarpmant Labs on using it inspired by my Tweet (which was in turn inspired by this).

Luckily the Boddingtons-type strain we use for most of our batches isn't "excessively" flocculent. When we fermented a run with Whitbread we ran into issues with the cells being too clumpy to count. Luckily BrewKaiser has a whole post on additions you can add to help. Phosphoric acid worked OK, but a local brewer suggested disodium EDTA, which I plan to buy before we do another run with a similar strain.

Next, place a couple drops on the diluted culture a hemocytometer, apply the slide cover, and stick it under a microscope (we have an Omax). Count the live and dead cells in five squares (each made up of 25 small squares) - four corners, and center. This provides a large enough sample size to avoid undue randomness. A small tally counter helps keep track. The standard rule is to count cells touching the left and top lines, but not the right or bottom. Count connected cells as two only if the daughter cell is more than half the size of the mother. Then I plug the totals into Inland Island's Yeast Cell Count Calculator. Usually our harvests are 80-90% viable off a fresh pitch, and they tend to go up from there on subsequent generations (90-95%). If your viability isn't great it could either be that the yeast isn't getting enough nutrients/oxygen, your initial pitching rate was too high or low, or that you are waiting too long to harvest.

There are automated solutions for yeast counting, but with some practice the whole processes will take less than 10 minutes.

Pitching Yeast

To pitch, we attach the brink to a T inline during knock-out. With the brink on a scale we use CO2 to slowly push in the desired weight of yeast (calculated based on the cell count, wort gravity, and volume). We pitch during knock-out so the yeast mixes with the aerated wort as it goes into the fermentor. White Labs advocates using a pump to pitch their fresh yeast inline to achieve better mixing with the wort. Best practice is to do another cell count off the tank once knock-out is complete to validate your process (we did it a few times, but now trust our approach).

When we started brewing more double batches to fill our 20 bbl tanks, we were pitching enough cells for 20 bbls along with the first 10 bbls of wort. Our thought process was that the yeast wouldn't do much in the 3-4 hours before the second half of the wort went in. However, we found our fermentations were less reliable, often dragging towards terminal gravity, and the yeast from those batches had much lower viability than expected. Both of these issues improved significantly once we switched to pitching only enough cells for the initial knock-out volume. This allows for more growth and thus a higher proportion of younger yeast cells.

Hopefully this overview of our process is helpful for someone starting a new craft brewery, or looking to take their yeast management to the next level. As with anything in brewing, the more variables you can track and control the more consistency you'll have in your results. Yeast management isn't a "fun" topic, but it is one of the simplest things a brewery can do to increase consistency, improve flavor, and save money!

Historic English Imperial Stout Revisted

2020-05-20T07:40:00.003-04:00

Any long-time readers may recall my interest in the original Russian Imperial Stouts – brewed in England with four malts (pale, amber, brown, and black) plus caramelized sugar. Fermented with English ale yeast and Brettanomyces. They bear about as much resemblance to modern pastry stouts as the original English-brewed IPAs do to today’s hazies and milkshakes.

Of the many recipes from this blog that we’ve adapted to the big system at Sapwood Cellars (Atomic Apricot, Cherry Wine, Tmavé Pivo, Scottish Stout, Cheater Hops, Saphir Pilsner, Berliner etc.) my Courage RIS-Inspired is probably the one I was most excited about! We closely followed the original recipe from 2007 (which I preferred to the 2016 rebrew). Last summer we released the base beer (Lord Rupert Everton), followed last fall by Lord Rupert Barrelton which had a quick dip in barrels that held Cognac Finish Rye Whiskey from Sagamore Spirits.

After refilling the barrels from kegs of the same base beer, we pitched the same strain of Brett I used for the original, WY5110 Wyeast Brett anomalus. It's been out of production since 2007, but I asked everyone I could think of (starting with Wyeast) and no one had the strain available… French microbiologist Christophe Pinchon to the rescue! We’d already gotten “his” Willner Brett strain second hand for our gose (Salzig). The culture he sent started up quickly and I pitched half of an active 2L starter into each 80 gallon barrel in September… then not much happened. The Brett didn’t produce any CO2 or reduce the gravity over six months. Originally, we planned to bottle the beer once it stabilized, but without any apparent fermentation we decided we were better off kegging the beer as Sir Rupert Barrelton.

Sir Rupert Barrelton

Smell – Loamy, with fresher notes of Tootsie Roll (from the malt) and coconut/vanilla (from the barrel). I really have a hard time figuring out it that earthy note is Brett, or just mild oxidation from time warm in the barrels. The spirit-character is relatively subtle, but is enough to immediately make it clear this isn’t an authentic take.

Appearance – Black with chestnut edges. Pretty good dark brown head. Solid retention.

Taste – Smooth flavor without any sharpness from the roast. The Maris Otter and Amber malt help to fill-in the background of the black malt. Plenty of baking soda prevents the roast-acidity that can cause stouts to become acrid. The dark candi syrup brings a subtle dark fruitiness without being obnoxiously raisin/plum like dark crystal can be.

Mouthfeel – Not as thick as stout drinkers are used to (I’ve seen some stouts finish above 1.080 now… and I used to think Dark Lord’s 1.060+ was absurd)! Low carb, just how I like by big/dark beers.

Drinkability & Notes – It’s a unique beer compared to the other more “modern” stouts we brew. The “reasonable” FG of 1.026 makes it easier to drink than the typically sweeter ones. I like the depth of the combination of barrel-character and malt. The age/Brett give it additional complexity. If you are in Maryland and want to try the beer we'll have it available in crowlers the next month or so.

Changes for Next Time – Maybe it was the alcoholic boost from the barrel that prevented the Brett from doing more? Better to use more neutral barrels, or stainless with oak barrel-alternatives. We refilled the barrels with a riff on my Big Funky Ale and pitched additional microbes. It would be fun to try making our own invert no.4 to replace the dark candi syrup.

Courage RIS Inspired 2016

Smell – Brett (cherry, funk, dusty). The Brett C really covers up the malt almost completely in the nose. Blind I suspect I’d lean towards calling it an Oud Bruin.

Appearance – Black with dark-brown edges. Big tan head that is held up by the carbonation for a few minutes before deflating.

Taste – Stout-ier than the nose, with some cocoa notes. However, the Brett is still the primary flavor. Some nutty (almost peanut brittle) flavors from the malts. Moderate bitterness.

Mouthfeel – Carb is similar to what I remember, higher than I’d prefer. A little thin, although once the carbonation is swirled-down it improves.

Drinkability & Notes – It’s a bit beer with a lot of funk, plenty of alcohol, and a bit too much carbonation, not exactly a beer I (or many) would drink quickly.

Courage RIS Inspired 2007

Smell – Oaky. Unlike Sir Rupert, it is the wood rather than spirit coming through. Not damp basement, and not Home Depot lumber aisle either. Just a pleasant vanilla-sugar cookie woodiness. A hint of licorice. The roasty-toasty malt is there, but is subtle. Like Sir Rupert the Brett is restrained, honestly makes me more confident that the Brett really did do “something” in the fresher beer.

Appearance – Black with chestnut highlights. Head pours small and drops quickly.

Taste – Every bit as good as it was 10 years ago. Cookie-toasty, vanilla-oaky, cocoa-roasty, and leather-earthy. It is relatively dry for a beer this big, but the bitterness is mostly gone too. I don’t get any wet paper, or any other signs of detrimental oxidation.

Mouthfeel – The body a bit thin, but considering I brewed it when I was 24 and I’m 37 now I can’t complain! A testament to my beginner's luck… and metabisulfite. Carbonation is low, but I wouldn’t mind if it was even lower.

Drinkability & Notes – What can I say about a beer I brewed more than 1/3 of my life ago? The other two are good beers that I enjoy, this one is something special. A huge range of flavors that all work in unison. Sadly this is my last bottle.

Why Are Brewing and Winemaking so Different?

2020-02-18T08:00:00.001-05:00

On their surfaces the fermentations of beer and wine seem like they should be similar. A cool, sugary liquid is inoculated with Saccharomyces cerevisiae (or a close relative) and the eventual product is packaged with a goal of minimizing oxidation. Why then are the two approached in such fundamentally different ways from yeast pitching rate to the use of oxygen scavengers?

I’ve only made a handful on wine kits over the years so I’m by no means an expert vintner. That said, I’ve been thinking about cider while I wait for TTB-approval to begin production at Sapwood Cellars. The question is, do we approach it like a beer or a wine?

Wine yeast has a different history than beer yeast. Where ale and lager strains have been domesticated for centuries, most wine strains were at best semi-domesticated until the last few decades. A big reason for that is the seasonal production differences between the two products. Dried grain and hops store and ship easily compared to grapes, so harvesting and repitching yeast was common in beer long before wine (which relied on an annual spontaneous fermentation).

Wine strains are still less domesticated (more wild) and thus tend to be more “competitive” than beer yeast, producing kill factors and generally being able to bootstrap up from low cell counts. As a result, suggested pitching rates for wine are usually much lower than for beer. A typical pitching rate for a 1.080 beer might be 3 grams of dried yeast per gallon, where wine is usually 1 g per gallon. This is also reflected in the package size for the strains (5 g vs. 11.5 g).

For home winemakers anyway, it is difficult to find best-practices for things like pitching rate and oxygenation. We can certainly debate the credibility and accuracy of the advice, but homebrewers have widely referenced formulas and targets for these based on original gravity and type of yeast (ale vs. lager).

Wine must isn't boiled to avoid destroying its fresh fruit flavor, so without chemical intervention there is no “clean slate” to begin fermentation. Even pitching a pure culture of yeast wouldn’t guarantee a product that doesn't eventually sour or go off. That helps to explain the common uses of antimicrobial sulfite and sorbate (which winemakers have widely referenced formulas for dosing rate). Chemical stabilization also allows the packaging of sweet wines, where brewers have mash temperature to control fermentability.

Most of the analysis of wine, must, and fermentation has happened since the 1970s. Where some of the earliest work on microbiology (not to mention scientific measurement) was from breweries a century earlier. Beer became science-ified first thanks to the earlier industrialization of brewing (again a result of the differences in ingredients).

Modern breweries are built upon keeping oxygen out of the beer post-fermentation. Much of this is accomplished with purging with carbon dioxide or nitrogen and transfers and packaging under pressure. Conversely, conventional wine production relies on dosing with metabisulfite (a potent oxygen scavenger) to neutralize oxidation while the process doesn’t do as much to avoid it.

Part of this is that breweries may make 25 or more batches of beer in a given fermenter each year, while seasonal wineries don’t have this luxury. This means even smaller breweries can afford to spend more on their equipment allowing for transfers under pressure rather than pumps. Dealing with force-carbonation makes pressure vessels a requirement. There are also stages of winemaking, like punch-downs or separating the skins from the fermented wine, that are nearly impossible to do without introducing some oxygen. There is also an expectation of stability and ageability with wine.

Traditionally beer was naturally carbonated, which allows the yeast to scavenge oxygen introduced during packaging. Combine that with typical quick consumption and oxidation wasn't as large of a concern until recently.

Natural wineries that avoid the addition of sulfites do take some cues from brewing in limiting oxygen, but this is currently a growing but still niche winemaking approach.

Beer has always been a recipe: grains, water, and herbs at a minimum. Sugars, fruit, spices etc. all have a historic precedent in brewing. It is no big surprise then that brewers are more likely to add 100 different ingredients than vintners who can make wine from crushed grapes alone - although adulteration had a historic place. Most of the wines I see with a "flavor" addition (e.g., chocolate, almond etc.) are inexpensive gimmicks. The lone exception is herbs in wines like vermouth. Where most of the expensive highly sought-after beers contain additions that fall outside of the core ingredients.

Modern wineries add all sorts of processing aids, acid/sugar adjustments, nutrients etc. but generally with the goal of balancing, showcasing, or heightening the fruit expression. Wine strains are now carefully selected to have specific interactions to increase aromatic compounds (e.g., the ability to converts the thiol 3MH to 3MHA). Wine yeast blends are also popular with one strain freeing a compound and another converting it. All things that are rarely considered for brewing.

Brewers have only relatively recently begun to embrace aging in oak barrels, something many wineries never gave up on when stainless steel became the standard. Brewers have very much relied on the secondhand barrels from wine and spirit production rather than buying new or directly supporting coopers.

This goes after the larger point that brewers are currently less tethered to their industry's recent past than wineries. The most popular craft beers of today don't look or smell like any beers that were produced 30 years ago, while wines have remained relatively unchanged. Much of the American craft beer boom was based on taking dead or dying styles, ingredients, and techniques and resurrecting them. It is great to see the same becoming more popular in wine with the resurgence of orange wine, obscure varietals, and natural winemaking.

I’m not here to argue that either brewers or vintners are better. I think there are things that each side could learn from the other. Why don’t we see dry hopped wine? Why don’t brewers add 5 PPM of metabisulfite as insurance for the hazy IPAs? Why don’t we see more wineries reduce their sulfite usage by purging their tanks and bottles? Why don’t we see more brewers celebrate the terroir of local ingredients? I even wrote an article for BYO about using wine yeast in beer.

Someone could likely write a similar article about distilleries, cideries, sake-producers, etc. The point is to get out of your box, and see what other experts suggest in their chosen domain. Determine if any of it is useful to what you do!

I've talked to cidermakers who operate just like a winery in terms of their fermentation and highlighting of the apples, while others are clearly more influenced by craft beer (take Graft). We'll likely take a hybrid approach for our ciders, using our best low-oxygen transfers along with winemaking techniques that make sense to us. Celebrating the character of the apples, but still sometimes having fun with additional flavors.

Tracking Brewery Purchases, Crafty Beer, and Craft Conglomerates

2019-12-02T06:49:00.000-05:00

In July 2018 I made a poster illustrating the connections between breweries. I've expanded and updated it a few times since then, both thanks to people who have commented with suggestions and because big breweries haven't stopped buying smaller breweries. Below is the most recent update. As always let me know if you see anything incorrect, but please include a source confirming it.

Higher resolution image - Prints are available from my web store.

The biggest change since my last update two months ago was the purchase of New Belgium (and Magnolia) by Kirin/Lion. Other big news included purchases by Legacy Breweries (Ninkasi's parent company) of Laurelwood, and Aspen in pursuit of buying 15 breweries by the end of 2020. AB InBev purchased the remainder of Craft Brew Alliance (Kona, Red Hook, Cisco, Widmer etc.) up from 31.5%.

I added some smaller ownership groups around the center box, both craft breweries who own other craft breweries, and private equity firms that own a brewery in their entirety. I've also tried to replace the bigger breweries outside the US with smaller breweries that would be more easily confused for independents.

As always my goal isn't to tell anyone what beer they should buy/drink, only to provide information. There are a wide variety of situations represented along the outside of the chart, and there is a big difference between a brewery owned by Duvel Moortgat and one owned by AB InBev. Personally I do my best to support small local breweries where the owner is personally involved. Then to independent regional breweries, then to independent national breweries, on to the private-equity-backed conglomerates, and finally those owned by big beer (whose interests, lobbying, and sales practices often hurt small breweries).

There are also a wide range of situations that I haven't found a way to represent on the chart. For example the breweries that are owned in part by private equity firms (Abita, Stone, Schlafly, Unita, Weyerbacher, and Lord Hobo).

A few common questions:

How did you choose which breweries are in the center box?

I tried to include a range of sizes and locations, focusing on my favorites, friends, and those that had been generous with their time. There are tens of thousands of breweries and not enough room for all of them.

Why is Sol under Heineken, isn't it owned by MillerCoors?

The poster shows ownership, MillerCoors has a 10-year distribution deal for Sol in the US. My goal is to show ownership, so I ignore contract brewing. This is different than the overlap between Groupo Modelo and Constellation where brands like Corona and Dos Equis are owned/brewed separately for the US.

What is that weird symbol above the Trappists?

It's the logo of the Holy See (Vatican). Certainly not the same as the corporate relationship depicted elsewhere, but it is certainly a connection between them and the other monastic orders of the Catholic church.

Dealing with COLA, FONL, and Compliance

2019-09-16T09:59:00.004-04:00

With our first anniversary (and party) coming up, I wanted to write a post on one of the many areas I didn't know anything about as a homebrewer that goes into an event like this. One of my many hats at Sapwood Cellars is compliance. It is a necessary part of the dream job, but luckily not the whole thing! It includes things like record keeping, filing excise taxes, and TTB submissions for formula and label approvals. The taxes took awhile to get used to, but aren't that bad now that we have adequate record keeping procedures in place.

We're lucky to be in that Maryland doesn't require federal COLA label approval for in-state distribution. So we're just now getting into that as we've recently been approved to sell beer in Virginia, DC, California, and Oregon. Don't get your hopes up, for now it's just small shipments for festivals and events (e.g., Modern Times Festival of Dankness, Aslin Anniversary Party, Snallygaster). So far it hasn't been too burdensome, mostly just getting the templates for our labels and keg collars in spec, and then learning what words are required or problematic. It is a bit more work given the wide variety of beers we produce (more than 150 in our first year), but most of those are tasting room only.

The more annoying piece is formula approvals (FONL). Despite what several brewers have told me, formula approvals are required any time you are adding ingredients not in the list of Exempt Ingredients and Processes regardless of whether label approval is required or where/if the beer will be distributed. I called the TTB and had my understanding confirmed. True, the odds of getting in trouble for not having an approved formula are low for a beer that stays in state (especially taproom only), but as a long-time government employee I'm just not an "ask for forgiveness" kind of person. The issue is that it seems approvals are really subjective/inconsistent.

Last fall I'd requested a formula with acorns, to do a small batch with the acorns I dry-fermented. I was rejected. Well that isn't entirely true, what the TTB usual responds is to request the GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) notification from the FDA for the ingredient in question. The issue is that they know well that the most ingredients aren't on there, and that the only way to get it there would be to fund a study showing its safety. As a result, most of "GRAS" substances are specific chemical compounds (e.g., Xylooligosaccharides from sugarcane, Ergothionine, and Synthetic dihydrocapsiate) that large companies have gotten through. You know what isn't on there? Apples, while apple peel powder is. Oranges, but orange pomace and enzyme-treated orange pomace is. You get the idea.

When I contacted the FDA about acorns they responded that while acorns were not GRAS, I could use "tannic acid extracted from nutgalls or excrescences that form on the young twigs of Quercus infectoria Oliver and related species of Quercus." Pass...

Recently I saw another brewer mention that they had gotten acorn flour approved (but were still requires submission of a "tannin leaching" process). I submitted a formula for a dark saison with acorn flour, and was rejected again, but this time for the reason that acorn flour is approved without a request being required. Not sure what grinding the acorns up does to change it from requiring FDA study to being allowed without even having to submit a formula request.

Something similar happened with Staghorn Sumac (which I'd used at home with wonderful results). GRAS notification was requested from my submission, which annoyed me because I've had several commercial beers brewed with. I responded:

Maybe I am misunderstanding the GRAS Notices? It doesn't seem to include most of the typical ingredients added to beer, e.g., hops or barley. Most of the entries are for chemical compounds or specific extractions from plants, not fruits, vegetables, or other commonly consumed foodstuffs? Rhus typhina (staghorn sumac) has been made into a lemonade-like drink for centuries. Here is an info sheet from North Dakota State on the species, that includes: "Food - Sumac lemonade made from berries."

Three weeks later and my formula was approved without further comment...

I've got nothing against safety rules on what goes into beer. I'd just prefer they were clearly delineated and widely followed.

Since both of these ingredients are foraged and thlimited, we decided to make 15 gallon variants with each for the anniversary party. A barrel-aged dark saison (based on Funky Dark #4) for the acorns and a pale sour fermented with The Yeast Bay Melange for the Sumac!

Craft Brewing Equipment, Reviewed

2019-07-30T11:20:00.003-04:00

There are so many reviews of homebrewing gear online, but when it comes to craft brewing equipment you're lucky if you can find a forum post or two. It makes sense as there are so many more homebrewers than craft brewers... I also had more time to write before I started making beer 60+ hours a week. Now that we're a year into brewing at Sapwood Cellars, it seemed like a good time to step back and get my thoughts down about the equipment we purchased. Hopefully what follows will help a brewer starting out, looking to add something, or just wanting a sense of what things cost.

Forgeworks 10 bbl Brewhouse - $71,306

The Good: Reasonable price, solid build quality, gets the wort production job done.

The Bad: A few design head-scratchers on the mash tun. It has a huge volume below the false bottom (~90 gallons/3 bbl). The under-screen spray balls spray directly into the supports making them useless (the connection for them is also around back making it difficult to access). The torsion ring on the rakes wasn't adequately tightened when we received it causing the rakes fell off mid-mash a few batches in. No issues since properly tightening. Originally the pickup arm in the kettle extended into the center (right into the trub cone), but they swapped us our for a shorter one that is now standard.

Verdict: Satisfied with it so far, but not thrilled given things like having to pull the false bottom to clean underneath/between after the last brew of the week (the plates can be annoying to remove, but not bad compared to some other systems).

MidCo EC300 Burner - $1,070

The Good: Plenty of heat to have the kettle close to a boil by the time run-off is finished.

The Bad: The burner's control board is incredibly sensitive to moisture, just a few drops and it is fried. A fact that it would have been nice to have a warning about from Forgeworks (they said some breweries have had it happen multiple times). Otherwise it has just been a learning curve to wait longer to turn it on and throttle the gas to avoid boil-overs. Our beers are 1-2 SRM darker than predicted thanks to direct fire, but not really the burner's fault.

Verdict: Steam would have been great, but wasn't in our budget. We haven't had issues since covering the control board with a plastic baggie (we've got a spare controller too). We were told that MidCo had a waterproof housing almost complete last fall, but haven't heard an update since.

Thermaline Heat Exchanger - $4,198.72

The Good: Their website allow you to input the parameters (volume, desired chilling rate, ground water/glycol temperature) and they build a unit to accommodate. That seemed to work for us as the chill times seem to line up reasonably.

The Bad: Nothing major to complain about. In the summer we do have to slow run-off as the second stage (glycol) doesn't lower the temperature compared to ground water by more than a degree or two at full blast.

Verdict: Might have been worth it to go a bit more over-sized, but no issues with the build-quality, durability etc.

Apex 10/20 bbl Fermenters - $7,500/10,700

The Good: The price is reasonable. We've got the "new style" 10 bbls that have an easy-rotate racking. The 2 inch dumps at the bottom rarely get clogged with hops, and the 4 inch dry hop ports work well, especially with our hop doser (below).

The Bad: The 20 bbl tank is the "old style" meaning the racking arm is just a tri-clamp. Not ideal, but it works fine especially after switching to a Teflon gasket. The big issue on that tank is with the hop port, the literature said it was a 6 inch, but it turned out to be a DIN150 (European fitting). Apex had been aware of this for 6 months and it took me ordering a gasket (to confirm the size), a custom reducer, and a new clamp all from Sanitary Fittings to resolve the issue.

There is a minor issue with one of the 10 bbl fermenters as well, the sparyball arm is just a little short which makes reassembly a two person operation (one to push, one to clamp).

Verdict: Given the issues and poor service with the 20 bbl, I'm hesitant to order more tanks from them when the time for expansion comes. Especially as they don't manufacture the tanks, the only advantage of going with them rather than directly from a Chinese manufacturer would be service.

Colorado Brewing Double Keg Washer - $6,370‬

The Good: Great price for an semi-automated keg washer. It rinses, washes, sanitizes, and purges two kegs at a time without intervention. As long as everything is connected and the reservoirs are filled, we rarely have an issue (other than hops in the occasional keg plugging up). The cycles are customizable, so we've tweaked them. We run a double cycle on our sour kegs, and no issues so far sharing them with clean beers.

The Bad: It's been a bit of a chore to deal with the issues that have arisen in one year of use: casters fell off, weld on one of the pots failed, software "disappeared", gas solenoid failed etc.

Verdict: The company has been great at dealing with these issues as they've occurred, shipping us replacement parts, paying for a welder etc. That said, I'd rather have not spent so much time dealing with it.

Marks Mini-Hop Doser - $495

The Good: Allows us to add hops with minimal oxygen pick-up. Safer than dry hopping loose (no risk of foam-up). Ability to add hops to a tank without venting the head pressure.

The Bad: Nothing big, although expect to double the cost of the unit itself in fittings. We have 4 inch butterfly valves on our tanks and move the doser between them as needed.

Verdict: Not sure what we'd do without it... oh I do because we we're able to use it on our 20 bbl because of the wonky port size (run CO2 and hope you don't get a face full of beer).

Navien Tankless Water Heater Standard Model - $1,260

The Good: Outputs up to 180F, plenty hot for collecting water for the mash and sparge or pasteurizing a line. Relatively inexpensive to buy and operate compared to a traditional always-on HLT.

The Bad: In the winter 180F output runs at 3 gallons/min. Helps to have a tank with an electric element to speed things up, or pre-collect water the night before.

Verdict: At our scale, and without steam this made the most sense and we're still happy with it. Two units can be daisy-chained together if we want to speed things up (e.g., first heats to 140F, second to 180F).

Uline Straddle Stacker: Semi-Electric - $3,245

The Good: It's considerably less expensive than even a used propane-powered forklift. It's good in tight spaces because it's human powered, and powerful enough to lift a rack with two barrels. Being electric, it doesn't produce fumes that could negatively effect barrel-aging beers.

The Bad: Given the legs in front, it can't get around larger pallets, or standard pallets the long way. It is propelled by pushing, and weights over 1,200 lbs (plus whatever you are moving up to 2,200 lbs more). Only one wheel turns with steering making direction changes difficult. It also needs additional height above it, which can be tricky in a building with HVAC, lights, doorways etc.

Verdict: With our relatively cramped space, a forklift doesn't make sense, this gets the job done.

FlexTanks - $460-$1,190

The Good: They are inexpensive compared to stainless steel totes, while being easier to use than IBCs (international bulk containers). They have standard 1.5" tri-clamp fittings and sample ports. We mainly use the 300 gallon ones to hold bulk sour beer waiting for barrels, or to dilute barrel-aged beer that is too oaky (especially with so many first-use barrels). The 80 gallon FlexTanks are for fruit additions, where the large opening makes them easier to fill and empty than a barrel.

The Bad: They can only take ~1 PSI, so most of the movement has to be from gravity. The gasket on the lids is round and doesn't have a grove to sit in. This makes it is difficult to align without dropping in.

Verdict: They were a good place to start thanks to the price, but stainless would be more versatile and foolproof if you have the money.

EuroTransport Container Dimple Jacketed - $6,595

The Good: It's a movable, stainless-steel, temperature-controlled tank. We use it as our blending tank for sour barrel-aged beers. The bottom port is for liquid in/out (with a T for the sample port), and the two side ports for the temperature probe and carbonation stone. We currently have it off the pad, so it is nice to be able to pallet-jack it onto the pad for cleaning.

The Bad: It's odd that a jacketed tank doesn't have a built-in thermowell for the temperature probe. We use corny fittings for some kegs anyway, but it is weird to have a tank like this with a gas poppet on top. While the tank is jacketed, it isn't double walled so it sweats like crazy in the summer, we need to insulate it.

Verdict: Reasonably happy with it, but it requires a bit of a unique situation (like ours) to justify this over a standard brite tank.

XpressFill XF4500 - $6,295

The Good: It's a reasonable price for a four-head counter-pressure bottle filler. Does four bottles a minute when everything is humming along.

The Bad: We had some issues early on with the fill sensor. One or two heads would indicate that the bottle was filled even when it was empty. Turned out it was a drop of condensation on the CO2 line "falsely" completing the circuit. Not a problem now that we know what to do. One of the switches won't stay in the off position, which can cause the pneumatic foot to rise unexpectedly.

Verdict: I'm happy with it. Worth the added cost over a gravity filler for us because it reduces oxygen exposure, and allows us to bottle partially (or fully) carbonated beer. Our general approach is to chill the beer in the blending tank, prime with sugar and rehydrated yeast, agitate the tank, then pump in CO2 through the stone to get to ~1.5 volumes of CO2. The yeast does its job to bring the carbonation to target in the bottle, and we don't have to worry about predicting residual CO2 in barrels stored in ambient conditions.

Update: We had to cut down the stoppers to lower the fill heights which were ~17.4 oz in our 16.9 oz bottles. That seemed to work well.

How to Win Untappd (or any Online Beer Rating)

2019-05-16T09:57:00.001-04:00

Like it or not, online beer ratings have been one of the big drivers of craft beer over the last 20 years. As a brewery, you don't need to cater to them, but high scores can drive sales and excitement.

I spent a good deal of time on BeerAdvocate during my first few years of beer drinking (2005-2008). Reading other's reviews was beneficial for my palate and beer vocabulary. I reviewed a couple hundred beers, which gave me confidence to "review" my homebrew for this blog. However, there were aspects of trying to track down all the top beers that made it not entirely healthy. Whether it was fear of missing out on a new release, or the thrill of the catch outweighing the enjoyment of actually drinking the beer. I find how many new beers there are now freeing, there is no way to try them all, so I don't try!

Now that Untappd is the dominant player I'll glance at reviews (especially for one of our new releases), but I don't rate. It's rare to see a review that has much insight into the beer. Even the negative ones are rarely constructive. As an aside, I find it a bit weird when people in the local beer industry rate our offerings. Generally they are kind, but it just seems strange to publicly review "competing" products.

For four or five years I maintained a spreadsheet to track the beers I drank and those I wanted to try. I weighted the beers not just on their average BeerAdvocate score, but on the score relative to their style. That's to say I was more interested in trying a Czech Pilsner rated 4.2 more than a DIPA at 4.3 because Pilsners generally have lower scores. If all you drink are the top rated beers, you'll be drinking mostly the same handful of styles from a small selection of breweries. Why is that though?

Whether it is the BeerAvocate Top 100, Rate Beer's Top 50, and Untappd's Top Beers they all show a similar bias towards strong adjunct stouts, DIPAs, and fruited sours. I don't think the collective beer rater score aligns with what the average beer drinker enjoys the most or drinks regularly. It is a result of a collection of factors that are inherent to the sort of hedonistic rating system.

So what makes beers and breweries score well?

Big/Accessible Flavors

People love assertive flavors. Once you've tried a few hundred (or thousand) beers, it is difficult to get a "wow" response from malt, hops, and yeast. This is especially true in a small sample or in close proximity to other beers (e.g., tasting flight, bottle share, festival). So many of the top beers don't taste like "beer" they taste like maple, coconut, bourbon, chocolate, coffee, cherries etc. If you say there is a flavor in the beer everyone wants to taste it... looking at reviews for our Vanillafort, it is amazing how divergent the experiences are. Despite a (to my palate) huge vanilla flavor (one bean per 5 gallons), some people don't taste it.

Sweetness is naturally pleasant. It's a flavor our palates evolved to prefer over sour/bitter because it is a sign of safe calories. That said, too much can also make a beer less drinkable. I enjoy samples of pastry stouts, but most of them don't call for a second pour. Balance between sweet-bitter or sweet-sour makes a beer that calls for another sip, and a second pour.

Even the most popular IPAs have gone from dry/bitter to sweet/fruity. They are beers that are less of an acquired taste. More enjoyable to a wider spectrum of drinkers. I'm amazed how many of the contractors, delivery drivers, and other non-beer nerds who visit the brewery mention that they are now into IPAs.

If you want a high brewery average, one approach is simply to not brew styles that have low average ratings. That said, for tap room sales it can really help to have at least one "accessible" beer on the menu. For us that has always been a low-bitterness wheat beer with a little yeast character, and a fruity hop aroma. Their scores drag our average down, but it is worth it for us.

Exclusivity

The easier a beer is to obtain, the more people will try it. The problem is that you don't want everyone rating your beer. To get high scores it helps to apply a pressure that causes only people who are excited about the beer to drink (and rate it). This can take a variety of forms, but the easiest is a small production paired with a high price-point and limited distribution. You can make the world's best sour beer, but if it is on the shelf for $3 a bottle at 100 liquor stores you'll get plenty of people sampling it that hate sour beers. Even with our relatively limited availability we get reviews like "My favorite sour beer ever!" 1.5 stars... The problem with averages is that a handful of really low scores have a big impact.

I'll be interested to see how our club-exclusive bottles of sour beer rate compared to the ones available to the general public. The people who joined self-identified as fans of ours and sour beers. My old homebrewing buddy Michael Thorpe has used clubs to huge success at Afterthought Brewing (around #20 on Untappd's Top Rated Breweries). In addition to directing his limited volume towards the right consumers, clubs allow him to brew the sorts of weird/esoteric (delicious) beers that might not work on a general audience (gin barrels, buckwheat, dandelions, paw paw etc.).

As noted above some styles have higher average reviews than others. Simply not brewing low-rated styles goes a long way towards ensuring a high overall brewery average. Anytime I feel like one of our beers is underappreciated, I go look at the sub-4 average of Hill Farmstead Mary, one of my favorite beers. Afterthought recently announced a new non-sour brand, which will prevent beer styles with lower averages from "dragging down" the average for Afterthought.

I remember there being debate over the minimum serving size for a review on BeerAdvocate. I think a few ounces of a maple-bacon-bourbon imperial stout is plenty. However for session beers, can you really judge a beer that is intended to be consumed in quantity based on a sip or two? We don't do sample flights at Sapwood Cellars. We sell half-pours for half the price of full pours. Not having a flight reduces people ordering beers they won't enjoy just to fill out a paddle. It also means that more people will give a beer a real chance, drinking 7 oz gives more time for your palate to adjust and for you to get a better feel for the balance and drinkability. What kills me is seeing people review one of our sessions beers based on a free "taste."

Another option is physical distance. Most trekking to Casey, De Garde, or Hill Farmstead are excited to be going there and ready to be impressed. It helps that all three brew world-class sour beers, but I'm not sure the ratings would be quite as good if they were located in an easily-accessible urban center.

The trick to getting to the Top Beer lists is that you need a lot of reviews to bring the weighted average up close to the average review. So having a barrier, but still brewing enough beer and being a big enough draw to get tens of thousands of check-ins and ratings. Organic growth helps, starting small, and generating enough excitement to bring people from far and wide. Lines (like those at Tree House) then help to keep up the exclusivity, not many people who hate hazy IPAs are going to wait in line for an hour to buy the new release - unless it is to trade.

Shelf Stability/Control

Many of the best rated beers are bulletproof. Big stouts and sours last well even when not handled or stored properly. This means that even someone drinking a bottle months or years after release is mostly assured a good experience. Most other styles really don't store well and are at their best fresh.

Conversely, hazy IPAs are one of the most delicate styles. I think it's funny that some brewers talk about hiding flaws in a NEIPA. While you sure don't need to have perfect fermentation control to make a great hop-bomb, they are not forgiving at all when it comes to packaging and oxygen pick-up. That's partly the reason that the best regarded brewers of the style retail most of the canned product themselves. Alchemist, Trillium, Tree House, Tired Hands, Hill Farmstead, Aslin, Over Half etc. all focus on direct-to-consumer sales. That ensures the beer doesn't sit on a truck or shelf for a large amount of time before a consumer gets it. Consumers seem to be more aware than they once were (especially for these beers) that freshness matters.

Of course the margins are best when selling direct too, so any brewery that is able to sell cases out the door will. It can turn into a positive feedback loop, where the beer is purchased/consumed fresh which makes the beer drinker more likely to return. This worked well for Russian River, not bottling Pliny the Elder until there was enough demand that it won't sit on the shelf for more than a week.

Sure the actual packaging process (limiting dissolved oxygen) is important. But generally an OK job on a two-week-old can will win out over a great job on a two-month old can.

The ultimate is to have people drink draft at your brewery. That way you can control the freshness, serving temperature, glassware, atmosphere etc. That said, I notice the scores for our beers in growlers are usually higher than draft. I suspect that this is about self-selection, people who enjoyed the beer on draft are more likely to take a growler home and rate it well. It might also be a way for people to appear grateful to someone who brought a beer for them to try.

Reputation

This is one area where blind-judged beer competitions have a clear edge over general consumer ratings. When you know what you're drinking, that knowledge will change your perception. Partly it is subconscious, you give a break to a brewery that makes good beer. Or after a lot of effort to procure a bottle you don't want to feel like you wasted money/time. It can be more overt. I've had friends tell me that they'll skip entering a rating for our beer if it would be too low. I remember boosting the score of the first bottle of Cantillon St. Lamvinus I drank, it was so sour... but I didn't want to be that 22 year old who panned what people consider to be one of the best beers in the world.

I could also be cynical, but I can imagine someone buying a case of a new beer to trade and wanting to make sure they get good "value" by helping the score for the beer. Might be doubly true for a one-off beer with aging potential!

Sapwood Cellars has done pretty well in our first year. Out of more than 100 breweries in Maryland, we have the third-highest average score (4.06) on Untappd. That isn't even close to meaning that our beer is "better" than anyone below us though. In addition to being solid brewers, we're helped by our selection of styles (mostly IPAs and sours) and by selling almost all of our beer on premise. Hopefully that feeds a good reputation, which further drives scores as we continue to hone our process.

Brewer's Emergency Kit

2019-04-23T09:57:00.002-04:00

Whether you are a homebrewer or a craft brewer, things don't always go as expected or something breaks. If you aren't ready, it could cost you a batch or delay a brew. In the worst case scenario a company can go out of business, making a replacement part difficult and expensive to procure. More than once we haven't had a (seemingly) small inexpensive thing and it caused issues. Learn from us (and chime in with your own suggestions)!

Yeast

If you use liquid cultures, there is always a chance that your starter won't start or your brink will run dry. We always keep a couple bricks of dried yeast on hand. On a commercial scale, SafAle is ridiculously inexpensive ($50-75 for 500 g). We always have a brick of US-05 and S-04 in the cooler. The strains you keep will depend on what strains you use. If nothing else, we'll use them for primary fermentation on sour beers when we don't have enough liquid yeast harvested.

Being friendly with a few other local brewers could be handy as well, but there usually isn't a guarantee they'll have yeast to spare at the last minute.

Fermentables

I find it helpful to have both dextrose and maltodextrin on hand. We had a DIPA dry out a few points too far, easy enough to boil a pot of maltodextrin, keg it and shoot it into the brite tank to add .004/1P. Dextrose is handy if your gravity is lower by a few points, although in most cases we'll just leave the beer alone. Dried pale malt extract is another option, especially if your efficiency is inconsistent (or you often brew really strong beers).

It never hurts to order a few extra bags of a favorite malts either, especially for things like Golden Naked Oats that often seem to be out of stock. Extra base malt is nice too, especially early on when you're ordering ingredients for a few batches and still feeling out system efficiency.

Hops

Buying on the spot market means sometimes you get a bag that isn't all it should be. Better to have a few back-up options to swap in for dry hopping. Mediocre hops are usually fine in the boil, so if we open a bag of Simcoe that is so-so, we'll open another and save the first for a boil/whirlpool addition.

Fittings/Gaskets

We try to have at least one "extra" gasket in each size. This is especially true for things like manways that aren't generic. Unluckily we didn't think of this before the gasket on our 15 bbl DME fermentor stretched out... now they're out of business and we're still working to find a replacement. The one we have still works, but likely won't forever. If we order anything new, we get replacement seals and parts for it at the same time.

Same goes for having extra valves and other fittings that might leak or stop working. Delicate instruments like hydrometers, thermometers, refractometers never hurt to have redundancy either.

Controllers

Nothing is worse that electronics that don't want to work properly. Our MidCo burner for the kettle has a small control board that shorts if a few drops of water fall onto it. The first time was a complete surprise after washing down the kettle, but we ordered two replacements. That saved a batch of beer a few months later after a boil-over (our new gas meter really increased the heat output). No problems since adding a water-proof cover...

I've been meaning to buy a few extra solinoids for the glycol/tanks too as they are notorious for going bad.

Enzymes

When our most recent batch of saison stalled out we were ready for it, we added amyloglucosidase and the gravity dropped quickly to 1.001. There are other enzymes that you might consider as well that help with conversion, run-off, and clarity as well.

Gasses

While we have a bulk CO2 tank, we also have a few smaller tanks. They're necessary to pour at events, but they're also nice to have if the bulk tank runs empty and we need to keep pouring beer! Same story with nitrogen. We have two tanks so we have one in use and one filled (or waiting to be swapped).

Your Suggestions

Rather than waiting for more things to go wrong to learn what else we should have, post a comment and let me know what to buy!

Dark Funky Saison - A Retrospective

2019-04-08T09:52:00.003-04:00

Since 2008 my friend Alex and I have been brewing dark funky saisons. Each year we come up with a new concept, usually involving dried fruit and/or spices. We've been a bit lax the last couple years, the ninth iteration was brewed a year ago, and neither of us has bottled our share yet.

For my birthday a couple weeks ago, Alex came over to the brewery and we opened bottles of all the versions (including a few variants). I shot a video of our discussion, enjoy!

Recipes:

2008 Dark Orange Rosemary Saison

2009 Funky Dark Saison with Black Cardamom

2010 Fig Honey Anise Dark Saison

2011 American Farmhouse Currant Dark Saison

2012 Dark Saison with Quince Paste

2013 Cranberry Dark Saison

2014 Dark Saison Etrog

2016 Dark Saison Date and Pomegranate

The Economics of Opening a Brewery

2019-03-04T07:31:00.000-05:00

The excitement over hazy/NE IPA is the best thing that has happened for local breweries in a long time. They are expensive to brew, difficult to package, a nightmare to distribute long distances, and get beer drinkers excited! When we put a juicy Double IPA on tap it flies. Our recent 7-barrel-yield of Snip Snap lasted less than three days, while an IPA might last three weeks, and a pale ale five. Having a beer that draws increases growler sales, and helps sell all of our other beers as people end up trying other similar beers when they come in.

Here is a graph of the scores of 13 of our hoppy beers (pale ales, IPAs, and DIPAs) showing the Untappd score compared to the ABV. The formula for the trend line is y = 3.2008+.1392*x. That suggests if we brewed a 0% ABV hoppy beer it would score a 3.20 and to get a score of 5 would require 14.31% ABV. The R-squared value of the correlation is .71, so the most important factor in the consumer's opinion of our hoppy beers is strength (granted that typically comes with a higher dry hopping rate, sweetness etc.).

Driving business to your tasting room is job #1 for a small brewery because that is where the profit is highest. When you buy a beer at a bar or restaurant, most of the money goes to them rather than the brewery. While a ½ bbl keg of a pale ale might sell to a bar for $150-175 (a portion of which might go to a distributor), at even $5 pint the bar makes $620 in revenue. At our scale, it is almost impossible to make a profit only selling beer at wholesale. It requires a tight reign on expenses with a premium price point, not to mention low overhead.

It is no coincidence that local brewery booms seem to follow when a state or city allows production breweries to serve/retail their own beer. In the case of Maryland this has created backlash from distributors, and a lesser extent bars and liquor stores who see more consumers cutting them out.

Ingredient Cost

We aren’t doing a great job controlling ingredient costs. We don’t reuse our yeast nearly as much as we "should" (3-4 batches per pitch), we pay as much as $35/lb for hops that are difficult to get on the spot market, we buy our malt pre-milled by the bag, we use expensive “real” ingredients for our variants (and usually don’t up-charge over the base beers) etc. That said, having a tasting room that is busy covers all of those sins.

10 bbls – Pillowfort
$484 – 2-row
$137 – Malted Oats
$40 – Chit Malt
$50 – Milling Fee
$11 – Glucose
$.80 - Whirlfloc
$.06 - Zinc Sulfate Heptahydrate
$1 – Calcium Chloride
$1 – Gypsum
$.25 – Epsom Salt
$2.00 – 350 ml 75% Phosphoric Acid
$125 – Liquid yeast
$150 – Dry yeast
$77 – Columbus
$99 – Centennial
$396 – Citra
$264 – Azacca
~$100 – CO2/Gas/Electric/Chemicals
($1950/batch - $1.11/pour)

Let’s say we put more effort into yeast management and that gives us confidence to reuse the yeast for 20 batches. Bringing the proportional cost down from $125 to $25 per batch. The net savings to us would be $.05 per pour. What if we moved to a silo for 2-row, and cut our base malt cost down to a third and added a mill? $.14 per pour. That would make Pillowfort ~$.92/pour. Granted these recurring costs add up over the course of a year and both might yield improvements to the consistency and quality of our beer. But selling just one 1/2 bbl keg to a bar, even charging $250, loses us more money per batch then we’d save from making those moves. It also speaks to how important yield on these heavily dry-hopped beers is.

Most of our IPAs and DIPAs work out to $100-150 per ½ bbl keg. Self-distributing these beers for $200-250 there would be no way to make enough to cover rent, pay ourselves, and fund expansion. However, being a retailer of our own beers means we get $800-900 for that same keg sold by the glass and growler. It makes sense for us to charge a reasonable price ($7-8 for a 14 oz pour in a 17 oz glass) and have consumers return rather than charge a dollar or two more and end up having to self-distribute kegs (with the added effort).

When we do send kegs out, we try to get as much of a push out of it as we can (fests, tap-takeovers, beer dinners etc.). We don't pay for any traditional advertising, but we view the "losses" from self-distributing as a form of marketing. That also means not always sending beer to the same bars, as we want people to feel like they have to come to us to try our beers regularly.

Most bars use a flat percentage markup to price their draft. If a beer costs twice as much for them to purchase, they’ll charge twice as much to the consumer. That means that they’ll make a much larger dollar-per-ounce profit on more expensive beers. The same isn’t true at most breweries, an IPA with Nelson Sauvin or Galaxy is easily twice as expensive as a session wheat beer (especially considering the lower yield with high dry-hop rates), but we don’t double the price. Still, charging $7 for IPA and $6 for the session wheat makes the IPA more profitable per pour. When you visit a brewery and buy beer, you’re allowing them to spend more money on the ingredients and make better beer. Not to mention that the brewery will care more about their beer and have better control over the product.

Overhead

After ingredient cost, our next biggest expense is rent. Scott and I debated where to open and toured spaces with a wide range of looks and costs. While a beautiful rustic plot with room for outdoor events and a small orchard was appealing… either running on a septic or paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a municipal sewer connection was not. Conversely, opening in a vibrant downtown with plenty of foot traffic would have meant easier retail sales, but would have tripled our rent. Brewing is a space-intensive manufacturing business (especially with barrel aging), it is difficult for me to justify paying $30+ sq ft for the parts of the business that aren’t customer facing.

If we are able to brew enough to outstrip tasting room demand, we’ll look into opening a small taproom someplace other than an industrial park. For the time being, our location is close enough to residential for the tasting room and inexpensive enough for 4,000 sq ft of production. Luckily the power of Google Maps, Untappd, and social media has been enough for us to draw people in.

In addition to the ability to sell beer by the glass, a tasting room opens up the way for merchandise sales, private events, packaged beer, and even food sales (working on that now). It has been essential for us to have a space and offerings that attract customers, even those who aren’t beer nerds. A fantastic staff, and enough of them working for short waits also improves the customer experience.

Salaries are the third big expense. Scott and I have done 100% of the brewing, tank cleaning, kegging, and keg washing up to this point. Financially speaking, our labor has been free, but we certainly could have kept our day jobs and paid less-per hour than our lost wages to hire brewers and cellar-people. That said, it didn’t seem right to trust something we’d worked so hard for to other people. As I learned from consulting, the people who are physically there have the biggest effect on the results. We’ll be looking to hire someone in the brewhouse soon, but we’re still trying to figure out what the role will be (cleaning and cellar duties, or someone who already has the skill-set to be a lead brewer eventually). We were willing to pay for front-of-house, as that is where we didn’t have experience (or the time to learn).

Other Income Streams

I posted about Brewery Clubs a few months ago. As a brewery that didn’t take on outside loans or investors, the extra money we brought in from club sales was essential. It gave us the breathing room to buy more expensive equipment, ingredients, not to mentions barrels for beers we won’t sell for months or years, and dump most of a batch that we didn’t love. Padding in the bank account helped with our sleep those first couple months too.

We’re now “paying” some of that money back. We made it through the club holiday events, for which we created 16 sixtels of variants that we didn’t sell a drop of. Not to mention paid employees to work (and at $15 an hour as tipping was light without tabs). Most of that cost was in our time, but we’ll continue to incur costs as we give bottles, decanter baskets (below), and events that club members paid for last year. Not only do we want to ensure that customers (and many friends) are happy they joined, we’d like to over-deliver so many consider re-upping for 2020!

The rest of this year our biggest focus will be on packaging. Direct sales of canned and bottled beer should give us the chance to increase total revenue, but it will also lower our per-ounce revenue. While many people are willing to pay $8 for a 14 oz pour of DIPA... $5 for a 16 oz can of the same DIPA is about the top of the market. Cans have higher costs associated with them as well, both in terms of labor and materials (especially when you don't own a canning line). That really slims down the margins, and will dictate which beers are more likely to be canned (e.g., Pillowfort with Azacca rather than Snip Snap with Galaxy). The most important thing for us will be avoiding turning draft sales into can sales. Ideally cans are an add-on to tabs or an additional trip for a release rather than a replacement for draft consumption and growlers.

What makes sense for a brewery will depend on the types of beer they brew and their goals as a company. If you want to be a large production brewery, it may make sense to start fighting for draft accounts early. We don’t have any resources dedicated to outside sales, in fact we turn down most offers to put our beer on tap. We’d rather have an excess of demand, and be in strong position rather than fight for a limited number of tap handles with an ever-increasing number of breweries.

Having the huge catalog of homebrew recipes between the two of us has been a big advantage too. On Saturday we tapped a scaled-up version of Atomic Apricot. The price difference on the apricot puree was particularly stark, $1.71 per pound at the commercial scale vs. $7.84 for the same product (Oregon Fruit/Vintners Harvest). I haven't been doing much homebrewing or test batch brewing so most of my social media posting has moved to the Sapwood Cellars Facebook and Twitter accounts (Scott does Instagram because I usually avoid posting from my phone).

Am I a Better Craft Brewer or Homebrewer?

2019-02-15T07:09:00.000-05:00

We're doing pretty well at Sapwood Cellars so far. Our most recent batch of Snip Snap (Citra-Galaxy DIPA) only lasted 2.5 days on draft, about 200 gallons drained by the pour and growler fill. Ratings on Untappd were stellar. Is this how good Scott and I were at homebrewing or is our new 10 bbl brewhouse and temperature controlled fermentors making our beer better than it was?

I shot video of the big batch of Snip Snap and brewed a small batch at the brewery with my old pots and fermentor. We tried to keep them as identical as possible, using malt/hops/yeast from the same bags for both batches. I sampled both beers blind, and we served them to 49 customers in the tasting room to see which they preferred for this Video!

Is American Homebrewing Dying?

2019-01-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

Brewing beer at home changed the course of my life. At first it was merely a fun way to explore my drink of choice, and an excuse to hang out with friends. As time passed it became a larger part of my life, a side-hustle, a reason to travel, altered who I am. I always hated public speaking… until I figured out that I’m engaging when I care about the material. I was never passionate about reading, researching, and writing, until they meant I could learn to brew better beer and share my passion. I met many of my friends at homebrew club meetings, through this blog, and homebrewing forums. I worked a boring government desk job for 12 years, until brewing allowed me to open a business!

That’s why I'm sad that homebrewing is on the decline in America. I see it at DC Homebrewer’s meetings, where there aren’t nearly as many fresh faces as there were five years ago. The closures of retailers, like the recent announcement from Love2Brew. The surveys from the American Homebrewer’s Association gives hard numbers: from 1.2 million homebrewers in 2013, to 1.1 million in 2017.

Anecdotally over the last 30 years, American homebrewing has experienced three similar dips. Roughly the early-1990s, early-2000s, and the last few years. These coincide with three pivotal moments in commercial beer availability.

By the early 1990s most parts of the country had a selection of bottled craft beer from the likes of Sierra Nevada, Boston Beer, not to mention a few local breweries. No longer were beer drinkers limited to macro lagers and stale impotrs, because hoppy pale ales, malty browns, and roasty stouts were available coast-to-coast. I've met a few former homebrewers who thought that was enough selection to make homebrewing superfluous. There were still plenty of people who wanted to drink a wider range of styles though, and that still meant brewing their own.

A decade later with the opening and expansion of breweries like Allagash, Dogfish Head, New Belgium and hundreds more, the selection and availability of craft beer had exploded. You could find wit, kolsch, imperial stouts, apricot pale, IPA and a multitude more everywhere. Most cities had stores where you could pick from hundreds if not thousands of bottles. Again, some homebrewers didn’t see the need to keep brewing when they could drink a solid example of pretty much any style. Still though, many homebrewers wanted greater variety, unique flavors, and ultra-fresh beer.

Now we’re in another slide. With more than 6,000 breweries spread across the country, most Americans can take a short drive to visit a different brewery tasting rooms every week for a few months without repeating. Not only that, but the old model of four core beers, four seasonals, and a couple special releases is gone. Many breweries are producing 50 or more beers each year. The variety is staggering, and again many former homebrewers are happy to reduce their risk/effort and sample as many new beers as they desire. Not only is homebrewing suffering, but so are many of the breweries from those previous waves… Smuttynose, Green Flash etc.

In the chart below, the red line represents Google searches for "Brewery" the blue is "Homebrewing." December 2008 is the closest they have been (29 to 13), while July 2018 was the furthest (100 to 5). That's to say that while search interest in breweries has more than tripled over the last ten years, during the same time interest in homebrewing has dropped in half.

Where does homebrewing go from here?

There have always been different types of homebrewers, different reasons they brew. There will always be homebrewers. Those who brew not to save money, or drink the “best” beer, but who love the process. Those who are passionate about recipe design, microbiology, botany, community. engineering, culinary techniques, and experimentation. For them craft beer is a source of inspiration, but not a replacement for the hobby!

I don't view automated homebrewing systems as a threat to traditional homebrewing or a big boon for the hobby. If I hear one more new product that bills itself as the “Keurig” of beer… I’m going to lose it! It isn’t even like Keurig is synonymous with high quality coffee. I just don’t see any product that makes brewing that easy gaining a strong foothold because brewing beer involves more care than coffee and to-the-minute freshness isn't as important. You can buy a six pack at the store for less than it takes to brew these, and enjoy a bottle each night. The automated systems will always make beer that isn't as good as commercial, at a higher price-point. Not that automated wort production isn't appealing (and useful) for homebrewers looking to devote less time to the process.

If this time is like the previous two lulls, homebrewing is due for another bounce. Maybe the continual push for novelty in craft brewing, extra-bold flavors, and lack of true originality turns people off. Lack of quality, high prices, poor quality control, beer that sits too long before being sold… honestly now that I know how good IPA tastes within a month of brewing, I rarely buy a six-pack off the shelf. Hopefully as more consumers become accustomed to really fresh beer at tasting rooms, they get interested in brewing it for themselves! Maybe the greater number of people drinking craft beer simply gets more people interested in brewing.

The second option is decline. As quality beer becomes more accessible the price will be pushed down, making it an even more attractive option for marginal-homebrewers. Homebrewing becomes an even more specialized/nerdy hobby, and we lose out on the vibrancy that new hobbyists bring.

My best guess is that we're reaching stasis. There won't be a return the levels of excitement and engagement we saw ten years ago. There will still be plenty of people who drink craft beer, and try their hand at homebrewing, but only enough to replace all of the homebrewers who stop to drink craft beer or join the industry.

Homebrewing Matters

Drinking beer wouldn't have done the same thing for my life as homebrewing. An active engagement with brewing is the best way to really understand and appreciate beer. It caused me to learn and grow in areas that aren't really connected to beer or brewing. I understand that drinking a beer and checking in on Untappd is no-risk (I wrote a couple hundred reviews on BeerAdvocate), but it doesn't really lead to anything. Drinking beer is a diversion, brewing beer can change your life!

Foraged Staghorn Sumac Beer

2019-01-23T19:26:00.000-05:00

My homebrewing frequency has taken a nosedive recently (surprise), but I still try to find time to brew a weird batch when I can. In August, when Scott and I drove to pick-up our first hop order in western Maryland, I noticed that Staghorn Sumac was in full bloom along I-270 . I’d read about flavoring beer with it in The Homebrewer’s Almanac, but never actually tasted a beer brewed with it. Sumac is tart and fruity, traditionally used in a tart lemonade-like beverage.

I pulled over and harvested about a pound. The range I’d read was 1-5 lbs per 5 gallon batch. Without a beer ready for them, I took the clusters of dusty berries off of the central twig, vacuum sealed them, and froze. That was enough of an excuse to brew a batch of Berliner weisse (fermented with US-05 and Omega Lacto Blend - similar otherwise to this recipe). After primary fermentation I racked 1 gallon onto the resulting .75 lbs of sumac, and another onto .5 oz of dried Turkish sumac from Penzeys for a month. Obviously if the dried version is just as good, it certainly would be easier!

Dried Turkish Sumac Berliner

Smell – Aroma is light, doughy-grain, lightly citrus and roasted pear. An odd note of cinnamon as well.

Appearance – Clear pale yellow. It’s almost so pale that yellow isn’t the right word, it looks washed out, faded. Retention isn’t great, but the tight, white head sticks around for much longer than the other half of the batch.

Taste – Bright acid without being obnoxious. The finish has an odd fall-spice note as in the nose that I suspect is from the sumac. Dry without being a desert.

Mouthfeel – Classic Berliner, light and spritzy.

Drinkability & Notes – The not-entirely-pleasant musty-herbal flavor the dried sumac provided when the beer was young seems to have mostly faded to a light spiciness. I’m not sure I’d even pick it out if I didn’t know it was in there.

Changes for Next Time – Maybe a different/fresher source of dried sumac would provide a better flavor and aroma?

Staghorn Sumac Berliner

Smell – Aroma has the generic fruitiness of Hawaiian Punch, or Hi-C, but with an herbal hint of a Ricola cough drop. I don’t get any of the base beer, at this elevated rate it is all sumac. Certainly in the same sort of flavor-family as hibiscus.

Appearance – To go along with the aroma, it has the color of Hawaiian Punch. Similar head retention too…

Taste – The same fruit flavor from the nose, but more pronounced cherry candy. It’s a really fun flavor, that doesn’t stray into cloying. Acidity is snappy, sort of Vitamin-C, quick and punchy. No sweetness, finally breaks the comparison to "fruit" beverages.

Mouthfeel – Light, medium+ carbonation, but not excessively thin or harsh.

Drinkability & Notes – Staghorn sumac is a foraged ingredient that has a real chance for broader appeal. The flavor is fun, quenching, and somewhat familiar. The color certainly doesn’t hurt either. With how much it took, a mild base beer like this makes the most sense.

Changes for Next Time – I was sort of hoping this one wouldn’t be delicious so that I didn’t have to source a couple hundred pounds to put into a beer next summer. Likely could drop down closer to .5 lbs/gallon for a more balanced beer, but it is delicious as is!

I’m hopeful I can get this formula approved by the TTB for Sapwood, as there are already a few commercial beers from the likes Sumac Sour from Four Quarters, Backroads from Suarez Family, and of course several sours and saisons from Scratch. That said, it seems like they are clamping down as I had both acorns and Eastern Red Cedar rejected already. I’ve had several brewers tell me that the step isn’t necessary unless you are getting label approval (not true) or that it is better to ask forgiveness than permission…

I'll be making the trip down to Asheville, NC March 22-23 for another round of BYO Boot Camps! As usual I'll be talking about Wood/Barrels one day and Sour Beers the other. I said it before, but this really is looking like the last one of these for me given how much time running a brewery takes!

Fermented Acorn - Sour Brown

2018-12-10T06:57:00.000-05:00

The first week of October, DC posted a notice on our front door informing us that an arborist deemed the oak tree in our front yard hazardous. Up until that moment, it would have been illegal to cut down as a "heritage" tree (over 100" in circumference). They gave us 10 days to apply for a permit and have it removed. The tree had obviously been on the down-slope for the last 10 years, but this summer a large swath had gone brown mid-August and the rest in late-September.

I was sad to see the tree go, but glad I got to brew a beer with acorns foraged from it before it went!

Last fall, inspired as usual by The Homebrewer's Almanac, I collected acorns over a few afternoons. While fresh acorns are loaded with tannins, fermented they are said to take on a wonderful aromatics reminiscent of bourbon, Madeira, and plums. The various parts of any plant usually contain shared compounds (and flavors). It has become fashionable to cook with the "garbage" parts of plants (and animals) usually thrown away. While it takes more effort to prepare collard green stems or pork feet, it can be well worth it. While oak wood is used to age thousands of beers, its acorns, leaves, and bark are not nearly as popular.

I inspected each acorn to remove any that were cracked, or otherwise marred. I briefly rinsed them, and then arranged in a single layer on a shallow baking dish in the basement to allow them to dry.

Apparently my inspection wasn't thorough enough as I missed several small blemishes (example below) that indicated an acorn weevil had laid an egg inside.

A week later, after discarding those where a larva bored out, I moved the acorns to five lightly sealed pint mason jars. I didn't add water, microbes, or anything else.

Over the next nine months in my 65F basement the acorns slowly fermented on their own. First producing carbon dioxide and the pleasant aroma of ethanol. Then slowly a more complex aromatics of apricot, chocolate, and bourbon. Exactly which microbes are responsible is a mystery to me.

When I visited Scratch Brewing last November (on my drive from St. Louis to Indianapolis for the BYO Boot Camp... next one is March in Asheville) I had the chance to assist Marika on a batch at Scratch, and see their jars of fermenting acorns. Luckily for them, Aaron told me weevils haven't been an issue!

By the following summer, my acorns were smelling like a combination of whiskey distillery, apricot orchard, and old library. While their exteriors were unchanged, the interior transformed from beige to leathery brown. Non-enzymatic browning, that is to say the Maillard reaction may be at work as with black garlic? While these processes are accelerated at high temperature, they still happen when cooler.

I thought an oud bruin-ish base would provide a solid foundation for those darker flavors. I added flaked rye for body and fermented with East Coast Yeast Oud Brune (which contains no Brett, only Sacch and Lacto). ECY Flemish Ale is still hard at work on the other half of the batch. Once the Oud Bruin was finished, I added a tube screen with one cup of the cracked (with a hammer) acorns. After a few weeks I added another cup to increase the flavor contribution.

I'm hoping to use the remaining fermented acorns in a small batch at Sapwood Cellars, but the TTB isn't going along with my plans... yet. They've directed me to contact the FDA. It's amazing how many weird chemicals are approved, when a food that people have eaten for thousands of years is not.

Requiem for an Oak

Smell – Even at the higher rate the acorn character doesn’t leap out of the glass. It does have a richer, more woody-fruity aroma than any other quick sour I’ve brewed. I get some of that old book smell mingling with the Munich maltiness. There is also a brighter stonefruit aroma that prevents it from being too heavy.

Appearance – Pretty amber-brown color. Mild haze. Retention of the tan head is OK especially for a sour beer, although nothing remarkable.

Taste – Firm lactic acid, snappy without being overwhelming. The fermented acorns add leathery and fruity depth to the flavor without stepping all over the malt. I’m pretty happy with this as a lower alcohol oud bruin.

Mouthfeel – The flaked rye really helped considering this is a low alcohol sour beer. Doesn’t taste thin or watery.

Drinkability & Notes – For such a unique beer, it is pleasant to drink. The flavors meld nicely and the acorns help to simulate in a way the effect of barrel aging and Brettanomyces.

Changes for Next Time – I’d probably go even more aggressive with the acorn-rate, really to show them off. The beer could be bigger, but more malt might obscure the acorns even more.

Recipe

Batch Size: 11.00 gal
SRM: 18.0
IBU: 2.0
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.010
ABV: 4.7%
Final pH: 3.43
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72%
Boil Time: 90 mins

Fermentables
-----------------
60.4% - 16.00 lb Briess Pilsen Malt
22.6% - 6.00 lb Weyermann Munich I
11.3% - 3.00 lb Flaked Rye
3.8% - 1.00 lb Castle Special B
1.9% - 0.50 lb Weyermann Carafa Special II

Mash
-------
Mash In - 45 min @ 157F

Hops
-------
1.25 oz - 8 Year Old Willamette (Whole Cone, 1.00 % AA) @ 85 minutes

Water
--------
11 g Calcium Chloride @ Mash

Calcium	Chloride	Sulfate	Sodium	Magnesium	Carbonate
100	110	50	15	10	90

Other
-------
1 Whirlfloc Tablet @ 5 mins
2 Cup Fermented Acorns @ Fermenter

Yeast
-------
East Coast Yeast Flemish Ale
East Coast Yeast Oud Brune

Notes
-------
9/29/17 Harvested five pints of acorns from the White Oak in my front yard. Allowed to dry open in the basement.

10/6/17 4 larvae of an acorn weevil hatched. Tossed any acorns with exit holes, and tried to identify all of those with small entry holes to toss. Moved remaining acorns to one-pint mason jars, attached lids, and returned to the barrel room for fermentation.

Brewed 7/9/18

7/29/18 Added 1 cup of acorns (split and in a mesh tube with marbles) to the Oud Bruin half.

8/18/18 Added another cup of acorns, loose, as the flavor wasn't there yet.

8/28/18 Racked Flemish half to secondary in glass.

9/9/18 Kegged acorn half.

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Wine Yeast Sour Red (Again)

2018-11-27T10:06:00.000-05:00

So odd to get one of my favorite and least favorite sours out of the same wort (recipe). The half with cherries was magical, the half without is bland and listless. In addition to no cherries, this half had BM45 red wine yeast and Wyeast Roeselare in place of 58W3 and dregs from a De Garde bottle. I had reasonable results with BM45 in this Red Wine Yeast Flemish Ale, so I don't think it is to blame.

It seemed like a good time to revisit this batch because the scaled-up version went into barrels on Saturday. For the 10 bbl batch we used 58W3 for primary fermentation in stainless steel. We procured three Pinot Noir barrels plus two bourbon barrels for aging. My hope is that the spirit barrels provide a nice vanilla character to mingle with the cherries. Each will get a dose of microbes, East Coast Yeast Flemish Ale, Wyeast Roeseleare, and maybe additional microbes from our collection. Two of the barrels got 25 lbs of dried sour cherries. Next summer, when fresh sour cherries are available, we'll select barrels and blend into a tote for additional fruiting.

Wine Yeast Sour Red

Smell – Spice, caramel, apple sauce. A weird mix that doesn’t really remind me of a Flemish red. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if the flavors were enticing or synergistic.

Appearance – Pretty thick head. Nice reddish-brown color with abundant chill haze (judging from the clarity of warmer pour previously). Pretty beer at least!

Taste – Interesting spice notes as in the nose. Cinnamon especially. The fruitiness reminds me of quince paste, sort of apple, but not quite. Tart, but not really sour. The malt is one-dimensional, toasty. Not impressed by Roeselare as the sole source of microbes.

Mouthfeel – Thin, a bit watery despite finishing at 1.016. Solid medium-carbonation.

Drinkability & Notes – A real meh beer. Not off in any specific way, there just isn’t anything to carry the beer.

Changes for Next Time – For the scaled-up version, we swapped the Briess base malts for equivalent Castle malts. Other than the variety of microbes and barrels, we'll be sticking pretty close to the script for the cherry version.

Craft Cleaning: Cylindroconical Fermentor CIP

2018-11-09T11:13:00.001-05:00

Brewers often joke that they spend more time cleaning than on any other aspect of the job. That isn't quite true at Sapwood Cellars, but the cleaning aspect has been the biggest change from homebrewing. By comparison, wort production hasn't been that difficult or different. Sure it took a few batches to acclimate to the efficiency and losses on our 10 bbl Forgeworks brewhouse (as with any new brewing system), made more challenging by an unreliable flow meter. Even 15 batches in despite hitting our target mash temps, wort fermentability seems to be lower than expected. We're also still dialing in hop utilization given the thermodynamics involved with large wort volumes. Still, the concepts, ingredients, and techniques are all pretty similar to homebrewing.

When it comes to cleaning and sanitizing though, we've had to relearn the entire process. You really can't fill a fermentor with 360 gallon of Oxiclean Free and soak overnight or swirl and scrub... I miss those days. First, let's talk about chemicals and what they do. Our main supplier is AFCO, but Berko, Five-Star, and Loeffler all have fans. Prices seemed similar, we just didn't think about ordering until a couple weeks before we started brewing and picked the one with the quickest turnaround time. We buy most of the chemicals in 5 gallon jugs, and pump them into beakers to measure and dose.

Chemicals

Caustic (5229 Caustic) - Caustic is the primary cleaner used by most breweries. Usually sodium hydroxide based and heavily alkaline. It is ideal for breaking down and removing organic deposits (e.g., krausen rings). You can do a bit of trading-off between time, temperature, pressure, and concentration. That said, 2-3% caustic at ~150F (66C) for 20-30 minutes through the sprayball has been a pretty good place to start for us. Caustic is dangerous because it is capable of breaking down your skin (the lye used in soap making is similar). We started with a powdered caustic (Wash-It), but given the price and efficacy we transitioned to liquid.

Phosphoric-Nitric Acid Blend (5397 Microlex Special 30) - Acid helps to remove inorganic deposits, i.e., beerstone (calcium oxalate). It also helps to neutralize any residual caustic (not that there should be any with adequate rinsing) and to passivate stainless steel. Acid blend is used at similar temperatures and cycle lengths as caustic, although slightly cooler, ~130F (54C).

Five Star Peroxyacetic Acid (PAA) - While there are many sanitizers available, PAA is the most popular for breweries. At the right concentrations it is a robust sanitizer with high effectiveness. It breaks down to acetic acid, so it can be used no-rinse. It is a powerful oxidizer, which makes it important to drain any residual before fermented beer enters a tank or keg. Our bucket was leftover from the old brewery in our space, so we bought a pack of test strips and it still reads the expected concentration after dilution.

Five Star PBW - We have a bucket of this alkaline powered cleaner for soaking hot-side equipment and other gear where we don't want to have to be as careful as we would with caustic. We both used it at home, so were more comfortable with it than the Chlorinated Manual Cleaner we started with.

Iodophor (4330 Spark I2) - Similar to the PBW, it is nice to have a less hazardous sanitizer for spraying ports or soaking fittings. It is only effective on clean surfaces, so it is important to remove of detritus before expecting it to work.

Grain Alcohol - Given its quick kill times and evaporation ethanol is the ideal sanitizer for spray bottles and any surfaces that are highly sensitive (e.g., yeast culturing). Isopropyl alcohol is another option.

General Concepts

Pre-Heating - At this scale a tank has so much thermal mass that you can't simply put 15 gallons (57 L) of hot water to a tank and expect it to still be hot after circulating. As a result if you want the caustic or acid to stay hot, you need to pray hot water into the tank. A tank with an electric element (like our keg washer has) helps too.

Sprayball - Most tanks have a port that leads to a sprayball, a small metal orb that spins and sprays when liquid is forced through. These aren't always perfect, and can have blind spots, especially in ports and above it. In addition, it isn't effective at cleaning its own exterior.

Passivation - This is what makes stainless steel stainless, a thin layer of chromium atoms at the surface that prevents iron from rusting or leeching into the beer (which weakens the equipment and shortens its lifespan). With a pristinely clean surface, the oxygen in the atmosphere is enough to accomplish this, but acids (especially nitric) are more effective.

Safety

These chemicals aren't anything to joke about. Many brewers have scars gained from caustic or acid dripping onto their skin . Safety glasses, long gloves, chemical resistant boots and pants are a must when handling them. Read the safety data sheet for each chemical you are using and know what to do if some gets on your skin or in your eyes. I don't get to drink as much beer as I used to because the end of the day is usually the most dangerous time.

Scott and I prefer to have all of the tank's arms connected from the start, allowing us to use valves to direct the flow of the cleaning and sanitizing solutions. We started off using a manifold coming off the pump, but have changed to daisy-chained T's between the arms. Many brewers prefer to simply move a single output line from the pump between the arms. This requires less setup time, but more active effort once cleaning begins (moving the hose from arm to arm ~10 times through the process). It also carries additional risks if you move the hose without closing a valve.

Our Fermentor CIP Process

1. Once the beer is out of a tank, we turn off the glycol jackets and open the dump valve. We then shoot high-pressure cold water through the sprayball to remove most of the hops/yeast struck to the sides and bottom.

2. We use our on-demand hot water heater to generate 130F (54C) water to spray through the sprayball and manually through a hose to dislodge the bulk of the crud stuck to the sides/top of the fermentor. We'll run it through the pump to get good coverage.

3. We briefly remove the lower fittings on the tanks (including manway, racking arm, thermometer, sample port) to spray out the trub caught in them.

4. We blow compressed air through the sprayball at ~30 PSI with the bottom valve open for 30 minutes. CO2 neutralizes caustic, so best to remove as much as possible before proceeding. This long is likely overkill for a 10 bbl tank, but can't hurt.

5. We assemble our cleaning rig, usually a pump running to the sprayball, with a T to connect it to the racking arm and another to the blow-off.

5. We preheat the tank for a couple minutes by spraying 160F (71C) water in and letting it drain. We hook the water line in right before the pump so we can immediately go to cleaning once it is preheated. Our goal is to get the tank to read ~130F (54C).

6. We then use the hot water heater's built-in meter to send 10-15 gallons of 160F (71C) water into the tank. We dose in 3 oz of caustic per gallon (2.3%) using a stainless steel elbow on one of the ports (chasing the caustic with water to ensure it get in). We then turn the elbow down to allow that port to equalize the pressure inside the tank, while preventing caustic from spitting out.

7. I like to send a little flow through the blow-off and racking arm first to soak them during the 20-25 minutes sprayball at full pressure (60 hz on our pump - or a bit slower if it cavitates). Then five minutes through the other arms, before a final five through the sprayball.

6. Dump the caustic. Rinse each arm with hot water, then burst rinse 10 times for 10 seconds at 130F (54C) through the sprayball, allowing it to drain before each successive rinse. I'll often put 10-15 gallons (38-57 L) into the tank once or twice and recirculate at the end to make sure there is enough pressure to spray all the surfaces. You can check the pH of the drained rinse water to ensure it has returned close normal before proceeding.

2. We then take off all of the fittings (including the sprayball itself), soak them in PBW or caustic. We inspect the fittings and gaskets, rinse and put into a bucket of iodophor. For the ports we spray, scrub and spritz with iodophor before reassembling. We also take the chance to inspect the interior with a flashlight to ensure there are no deposits.

7. We run acid blend at 2 oz per gallon (1.5% by volume) using roughly the same process and times as the caustic. Significantly higher concentrations should be used on new equipment and once a year to ensure adequate passivation.

8. Usually we'll air-dry at this point unless we need the tank the following day. In that case we'll rinse and then sanitize with peroxyacetic acid in cool water at 200 PPM using the same rig, and pressurize the tank to 4 PSI of CO2 to ensure it holds. The next morning we'll dump any residual sanitizer from each port before running wort or beer in.

The whole process including sanitation takes three hours, but most of that time isn't active (just waiting for a purge, or cycle). Going longer on any of the times isn't a big deal, so it is easy to run while working on other things if you keep track of your progress and don't miss a step.

We haven't gotten a CIP cart with dedicated vessels and pump, so our biggest issue currently is that it is difficult for one of us to clean a tank while the other person brews because they require some of the same equipment. Luckily our current schedule of two batches a week doesn't make that too much of an issue.

I am by no means holding this up as a perfect or ideal process. It'll likely be viewed as overkill by some, and inadequate by others. But if you have constructive suggestions, I'd love to hear them! I'd rather err towards overkill because we're dealing with several yeast strains (including killer wine yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. diastaticus, not to mention Brettanomyces and Pediococcus in a dedicated tank), although we do have the advantage of only dealing with kegs stored cold.

Other Pieces

We addition we'll pump the same chemicals through our heat exchanger and carbonation stone. For the heat exchanger we also heat pasteurize by running 180F (82C) water for 20 minutes inline once we assemble our knock-out rig (we discard the water until we see wort before sending to the fermentor). Our keg cleaner automatically does the same process on our sanke kegs, including air and CO2 purges to recapture the caustic and sanitizer.