American Stout

I seem to have focused on dark beers for a while. It's not only my doing: my wife wants me to brew dark beers like porters, stouts and dark milds. She likes the complexity of porters with their mix of chocolate and coffee like qualities, but finds dry Irish style stouts like Guinness a bit lacking in complexity. I tend to agree with her, although Guniess is a great beer. American stouts are predictably bolder, combining an almost acrid roast note with aggressive American hops. This recipe is a scaled version from Brewing Classic Styles. I hope it will have a nice bold complexity when complete.

A note on the process: In some of my previous dark beers, I've steeped the dark grains rather than including them in the mash, a technique that is supposed to lend a smooth roast character. For this beer, however, I wanted to include the dark grains in the mash for a bolder character and, of course, to simply experiment with techniques.

American Stout
3.25 gallons
60 minute boil

Breiss 2-Row: 8.313#
Breiss Black Barley: 9oz
US Chocolate Malt: 5oz
Crystal 40L: 5oz

7/8oz Chinook, 11.7%AA, 60 mins
.75oz Columbus, 15%AA, 5 mins

US-05

Mash at 154F, batch sparge.

Expected OG/FG/IBUs: 1.071 / 1.018 / 55

Brewed 12/21/12

Didn't have time yesterday to make a starter using the re-cycled yeast from my previous batch. Oh well. Will use a packet of US-05 instead.

My mash temp was 155F, just slightly higher than my target. The mash looked really dark wight a nice dark foam on top. Collected 2 gallons first runnings. Collected 2.5 gallons 2nd runnings for a total pre-boil volume of 4.5 gallons.

Pre-boil OG was 1.053, for my typcial efficiency of 70%. If it boils to 3.25 gallons I should hit my OG almost spot on. Boiled for 20 minutes before adding first hops because I collected more wort than intended. The boil was smelling really good after the first hop addition.

The weather was rainy and windy today. A few drops of rain landed in my wort before cooling began. Probably it won't be an issue in terms of infection or anything. 

Cooled wort to around 90F using the IC, then left in 50F ambient air to cool to pitching temps. That was around 1:15pm.

Transferred at pitched at about 6:15pm, left in 61F ambient to begin fermentation. The next morning the ambient temp was 61F, which is a little too low for most ale yeast, so I moved the bucket to the furnace room where ambient temps are 64F.

Post-boil OG was 1.070, right on target! Woohoo!

12/23/12
10am, beer was sitting in 65F ambient air temps, with good activity in the airlock. The stick-on thermometer read 63F. So in the right temperature range for minimal yeast character. 

12/24/12
9:15am - Airlock activity had slowed to about one bubble per 15 seconds. Ambient temps around 64F. I hope the yeast will be able to dry out the beer enough before flocculating.

1/14/13

Bottled with 60g of sugar, going for 2.1 units of CO2. Measured FG at 1.022, which is a little bit higher than expected. I hope I don't get any exploding bottles! I got 30 x 12oz bottles.

IPA v3 Tasting

I've tried to brew IPAs a few times so far, and have never really been satisfied with them. My third attempt has turned out quite a bitter better, with a more assertive but not harsh hop bitterness, but it doesn't have the wallop of hop aroma that a really good IPA has. I do like this beer a lot, I just want it to have a stronger aroma.

Appearance: Coppery in color with a moderate head that fades to a thin layer of bubbles over the surface of the beer. Low chill haze but not crystal clear. I really don’t have a problem with haze in most beers, unless it causes the beer to look like mud or something. Lacing sticks to the side of the glass as I drink.

Aroma: Low to moderate aroma of hops. A nice piney quality mixes with some tropical fruitiness. The aroma is better than my previous IPA but not what I hoped for in terms of strength.

Taste: Hops predominate. It has a piney, resiny character with a little bit of "cattiness" but I do not find it harsh. Slight fruity quality. The bitterness is assertive, but again it doesn't have the fruity character of some IPAs. A slight taste of malty sweetness but that is in the background.

Mouthfeel: Low-medium carbonation, appropriate for the style. It has a medium body. A nice hop bitterness lingers in the aftertaste.

Overall: An IPA with good bitterness, low-moderate hop aroma, and low sweetness. Moderate body. I guess it is more in the "West Coast" style of IPA, which is hoppier and without as much body than an "East Coast" IPA.

For Next Time: Go for a more assertive hop aroma. The "hop-stand" was an experiment. Next time I brew this I will either dry-hop or skip the hop-stand in hopes that either of those methods will increase the hop aroma. I don't think I would change much else.

Coffee Oatmal Stout Tasting

My first brew with coffee turned out pretty well, I am happy to say. I am relieved because the oats I used were old and Irish style, instead of the standard quick oats that usually should be used in an oatmeal stout.

Appearance: Very dark, opaque brown or black color with a medium sized tan head on top. Carbonation bubbles stick to the side of the glass.

Aroma: A mix of coffee, toasted notes and chocolate notes. Complex, but I think the coffee is most prominent. I don't think I get any hop aroma.

Taste: Like the smell - a mix of toasty and chocolate, combined with a subtle roastiness and coffee taste. There's a definite sweetness from the crystal malt, and a nutty or bready flavor from the Maris Otter. No one taste predominates, which suprises me a little because when I bottled the beer it had a very strong coffee odor and the sample tasted like coffee. It has mellowed out quite a bit since then. I get a hint of hop bitterness in the aftertaste, but overall the malty / coffee flavor is dominant.

Mouthfeel: Pretty thick and creamy, but smooth. Moderate carbonation. There's a lingering coffee aftertaste, maybe combining with a bit of hoppiness.

Overall: A complex mix of roasty, coffee, chocolate and sweetness. Thick mouthfeel from the oats. Pretty smooth and not overpowering.

It would be great to have a side-by-side comparison between my version and the original, ut I'm not really interested in duplicating other beers so much as I am in getting a good end product. In this case I do think the beer is pretty good.

American IPA v3

So far I have not been satisfied with my attempts to brew hoppy beers like IPAs. Generally, the hop character in my IPAs has not been fresh and assertive enough, and in my attempt at a Cascade Session IPA, I ended up with a harsh, weird bitterness. I'm not sure what the problem has been. Possible issues (in no particular order) have been:

• Poorly stored hops. Although all the hops I have bought were stored in a freezer both pre- and post- purchase, some of them have come in vacuum-sealed oxygen barrier bags (optimal) and some have just been in a big bin at the LHBS (sub-optimal). Hops stored warm and / or exposed to oxygen will get stale, with less aroma and an oxidized character. 
• Poor water adjustment. I brew with water from Brookline, Mass., which according to the LHBS guys does not really need adjustment, even for hoppy beers like IPAs. In any case, I don't think this is the issue because brewing books like Brewing Classic Styles say that unless your water is really alkaline or super soft it should be the last think to be dialed in, after you've gotten the rest of the recipe / process to where you want it. 
• Poor wort cooling. The conventional wisdom seems to be that be that the wort should be cooled as rapidly as possible because, among other benefits, doing so prevents delicate hop volatiles from dissipating with the heat of the wort. On the other hand, there is apparently some benefit to "hop-standing", a practice in which hops are added to the hot wort before it is cooled, or alternatively, when the wort is at 170F or so, then left for around 10 mins before cooling the rest of the way.
• One thing I am not sure of is the temperature at which the hop character is no longer boiling off. My wort chiller is pretty fast in lowering the wort to around 110F, but has problems getting it lower in a reasonable time-frame. 
• Overpitching yeast. As the yeast flocculates it binds to hop compounds and drops them to the bottom of the beer. Overpitching can exacerbate this tendency. I usually pitch most or all of an 11g dry yeast packet into my beers, which is probably overpitching, though when using liquid or re-used dry yeast, I usually make a 1L starter, which is about right. 
• Excessively long dry hopping. Leaving dry-hops in the beer for more than about a week can result in a vegetal flavor. I do not think this has been an issue because I have never put dry hops in for longer than a week. 
• Poor storage of bottled beer. Once the beer has been carbed by bottle conditioning, it should be cooled to a pretty cool temperature to preserve the delicate hop compounds. I don't have the capacity to do this as of yet. 

For this next attempt at an IPA, I will be addressing some of these problems, though not all of them. The brewing notes should indicate how I have done so. This recipe does not call for dry hopping, so I will be trying to get the right aroma by proper cooling and use of fresh ingredients.

The recipe is more or less from Brewing Classic Styles, with a couple of hop substitutions because my LHBS doesn't always have the right hops or because I want to use up hops in my freezer. During the brewday I upped the IBUs to 80 from the original 68. Why not? I like hoppy beers.

American IPA Version 3.0
3.2 gallons

7# 8oz American 2-Row Pale
8oz Crystal 40
8oz Crystal 20
2oz Victory

Mash at 151F.

5/8oz Magnum, 12.6%AA and 5/8oz Chinook, 11.7%AA 60 min
3/4oz Centennial, 5min
1oz Simcoe (leaf), 1min
.5oz Amarillo, post-boil @ 150F, 10min
.5oz Cascade, post-boil @ 150F, 10min

S-05 yeast, fermented at 65F.

Expected OG / FG / IBUs: 1.067 / 1.018 / 80.

Brewed on 11/21/12

At noon, made a starter of about 3 cups of wort with reused US-05 yeast.

Hit my mash temps as planned.

Collected about 2.1 gallons of first runnings. Ended up with a total of about 4.25 gallons. So I think I'll do a 75min boil to get the volume down to about 3.25 gallons. I really need a sight glass for my kettle to be able to accurately measure my volumes.

Boiled hard for 15mins before adding first hop addition. The pre-boil OG was 1.049 at 4.25 gallons (or so) which is a crappy efficiency of 66%. But I don't think my volume measurements are accurate enough to really measure these things properly.

The "hop stand" left for 10mins.

Added the post-boil hops when the wort was 148F and let stand for ten minutes before using the IC and a water bath to cool to 85F, then let sit in ambient air around 45F for a while to finish cooling.

Transferred and aerated when the wort was still about 75F, but placed bucket in a bath of 65F water. Pitched yeast. I got barely above 3 gallons (including the yeast starter) in the fermenter due to a trub / hop loss volume of more that .5 gallon. That's annoying. I'd like to find a way to minimize the amount of wort loss. After all, when dealing with 3 gallon batches 1/2 gallon is a 17% loss. Perhaps using a "Hopshot" for bittering hops is a good idea, or perhaps some type of DIY hop strainer.

11/23/12

FG Reading

The brew is now sitting in 65F ambient air temps, and showing some signs of fermentation, but as yet it appears to be fermenting slowly. Perhaps my low temps have resulted in a slow takeoff or perhaps my bucket is still a little leaky (even tough I replaced the little black grommet) and some of the CO2 is escaping somewhere other than the airlock, reducing the apparent strength of the fermentation.

11/24/12
The beer appears to be fermenting strongly, with frequent bubbles in the airlock. Yay!

12/4/12
Bottled today with 1.75oz sugar, aiming for 2 volumes of CO2. I got 29 x 12oz bottles and about a pint of beer left in the bottling bucket. Final OG was 1.010. A little low. The beer smelled moderately hoppy but had a pretty good hop bitterness. I think this will be pretty good.

Toasted Oat Coffee Stout

This recipe is simply a scaled version of recipe from The Mad Fermentationist, whose blog I have been following for a while. The title more or less explains what it should taste like. My version will be a tiny bit different in that I will be using some Irish-style oats, (which I discovered are not good for breakfast because they need to be cooked before eating, unlike Quaker Oats) toasted and boiled at home rather than the commercially toasted oats used in the original. Also I'll be using S-05 instead of S-04.

Steeping the black and chocolate grains.

Toasted Oat Coffee Stout
4# 8oz Crisp Maris Otter
1# 5oz Toasted Irish Oats
8oz Roasted Barley
8oz Briess Chocolate
4oz Crystal 40L
3oz Crystal 90L

.625 oz Chinook, 11.7%AA, 60mins

Mash at 154 for 60 mins.

Safale S-05

1.25oz Mocha Java crushed coffee beans, added after primary fermentation, about 24 hours

Expected OG / FG / IBUs: 1.055 / 1.014 / 38

11/1/12
Prepared oats: boiled the Irish Oats to gelatinze the starch, then when the porridge was fairly thick I transferred to a baking dish and put in the oven for about 2hours at 350F. The oats dried out a bit (I made sure to stir them so that no just the oats on the surface got dry) and took on a toasty, slightly-cookie like smell.

11/2/12
My mash  temps were 2F lower than desired. Meh!

Steeped the chocolate and black grains separately at 155F, added the resulting liquid to the 1st runnings and the rest of the dark grains to the sparge.

Very cloudy vorlauf.

The vorlauf was cloudier than usual due to all the gummy oat proteins and such. Fortunately no stuck sparge despite that I neglected to use any rice hulls.
 
Collected  2gal 1st runnings, with the addition of the dark-grain steeping water, and anoth 2.3 gal 2nd runnings for a total pre-boil volume of 4.3. Pretty much on-target.

Pre-boil OG was 4.4gal @ 1.040, for an efficiency of 68.5%. About average for my system, it seems.

I could tell that I was going to be a little over-target in terms of beer volume, so I added 4oz extra-light DME to up the gravity a little in compensation.

After chilling to 100F, covered the kettle and let sit in the garage, about 55F, to cool to pitching temps.

Transferred, aerated and pitched yeast. The wort was around 75F. After pitching, I placed the bucket in a tub of 60F water and used ice to maintain that temp.

11/4/12
Either my fermentation temp is too low or my plastic bucket has an air leak. There has not been any bubbling in the airlock, although by shining a flashlight into the sealed bucket I could see that a krausen has probably formed. So, I took out the fermentation lock and replaced it, making sure the little grommet around the hole in the lid was properly set. Then the airlock started bubbling slowly.

11/14/12, 9:50pm
I added 1.25oz coarsely crushed Mocha-Java coffee beans from Whole Foods. I bought them today and crushed them using a coffee grinder. They had been placed in the dispensing bin at Whole Foods on 11/8. I'm not really sure what the restocking date means in terms of freshness. I put the grounds in a sanitized hop bag with a small weight. Oddly it still seemed to be floating a little. The beer had that recently-fermented green smell, which I find a bit harsh. The plan is to bottle tomorrow evening around 9pm, so that the beer will have been sitting on the coffee for 24hours.

11/15/12, 9pm
Bottled with 2.25oz sugar, going for 2.2 volumes of CO2. I got 32 bottles of beer that has a moderate to strong coffee aroma. Final gravity was 1.016 - a little higher than expected but that's OK. I have pretty high hopes for this one. I'll try one bottle next week on Thanksgiving but let the rest sit for a total of two weeks before reviewing.

Smoked MIld Review

Hoping for a flavorful but low-alcohol beer, I made a Smoked Mild a few weeks ago using Breiss cherry-smoked malt. The results, I am happy to report, have been pretty good. Some people at the local homebrewers club liked it, including the guy who works at the LHBS that sold me the grains. Woohoo!

Appearance: Deep brown or mahogany in color. Appears very dark in the glass with brown highlights around the edges. A decent tan foam appears at the initial pour although is fades fairly quickly to a ring of bubbles where the surface of the beer meets the glass. I wish this beer were a little lighter in color.


Aroma: It has a reasonably strong smokiness, but not in a bacon or ham-like way. There's a hint of the roastiness as well, so the smoke isn't overwhelming.

Taste: Smoke up front, but a sweeter taste combined with some roasty character after the first impression. Again, the smokiness is neither overwhelming nor meaty, but noticeable. No hop aroma, little if any noticeable bitterness.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation. The beer is low in body but the low level of carbonation prevents it from feeling spritzy. Leaves a sweet and roasty aftertaste.

Overall: A drinkable, low alcohol beer with an assertive but not overwhelming smoke character, balanced by a sweet and roasty quality. Low in body, but low in carbonation. Good complexity without being overwhelming.

For Next Time: The only thing I would change is the color. Currently I think it's too dark for the Mild style. Perhaps instead of 4oz Black Patent Malt I could use 2oz chocolate and 2oz black patent. That might also give the taste some added complexity. I definitely want to brew this one again.

Funky Table Saison Brewday

I would like to do a beer with a Brettanomyces twist, but without having to wait a really long time. This means keeping the gravity low, as I have read from several sources that for every 10 gravity points above 1.020 you should secondary the beer for an additional month to let the Brettanomyces work its magic. (After primary for 4 weeks). Otherwise the flavors may not fully develop or you may get beer that becomes dangerously overcarbonated (ie bottle-bombs).

The most prominent homebrewing funk-master in my mind is The Mad Fermentationist. I have been inspired by some of his recipes, such as his Funky Low Gravity Saison. As I understand it the basic idea is to make a saison in the 1.040 OG range and ferment with a combination of WLP645 Brett c. and WLP565 Saison. I'm going for a strong brett taste to get a sense of what that micro-critter is all about.

For this brew I based the grain bill of the BCS Saison recipe but scaled it down a bit to hit a 1.041 OG, with slightly reduced hopping. A little bit of acid malt and a 152F mash temp is part of the picture so that the brett has some good material with which to create its characteristic funkiness. The plan is to primary for about 4 weeks around 70F, followed by a secondary for 2-3 months. I hope the beer will be ready in February '13.

Funky Mini-Saison
3.25 gallons

3# Belgian Pilsner
1# Wheat Malt
0# 4oz Cane Sugar
0# 4oz DME (I forgot to get Munich Malt at the LHBS. That was dumb.)
0# 6oz Crystal 40L
0# 4oz Acid Malt
----
5.125# Total Fermentables

1/2 tsp. gypsum
152F Mash Temp
90min boil

5/8oz Hallertau, 3.9%AA, 60 mins
3/8oz Hallertau, 3.9% AA, 15 mins
1/2 tsp. Irish moss, 15 mins

WLP565 - Belgian Saison I
WLP645 - Brett c. 

Expected OG: 1.042 
Expected IBUs: 21


10/4/12
Made a starter with WLP565 from the previous saison and with WLP645 Brett. c. 

10/5/12
The starter was fermenting nicely with a moderate krausen by 7:30am.Started the mash around 7:50a and hit the 152F temp right on. Got 2.25gal of 1st runnings, as I was aiming for. Hit my pre-boil volume target of 4.5gal too.

Pre-boil OG without the sugar or DME was 1.030 at 4.5 gallons. That is about 76% efficiency. My system seems to get better efficiency on lower gravity brews. Added the sugar and DME with about 75mins left in the boil.

Used the IC to get the wort to 110F. Placed brew kettle in 65F water with some ice-packs to cool it to pitching temps.
   
Pitched when beer was at 70F, then placed fermentor in bin of 66F water for primary fermentation. Ended up with 3.4 gallons, or 3.5 with the starter thrown in. I have 5 cups (.3125 gal) of trub left in the bucket.

If my calculations and measurements are correct this all works out to a boil-off rate of .525 gallons / hour for my set-up on a rigorous boil. I need to figure that exact number into my calculations the next time I brew so that I get the right volumes.

Also, according to my rough calculation, because of the greater mash efficiency than expected, I should still have about the right OG of 1.042 - 1.045.

Pitched around 3pm. By 11:30 that evening the airlock was bubbling fairly actively.

10/19/12
Transferred to secondary. The gravity was at 1.006 - pretty low but I hope there's something left for the brett to munch on over the next few months. The sample tasted OK but definitely "green" and in need of more flavor development. I got a bit more than 3 gallons into the Better Bottle.  

1/18/13
Bottled with 68g of sugar, going for 2.4 volumes of CO2. The beer was all the way down to 1.003. I got slightly more than three gallons in a bunch of 22oz bombers and a few 16oz bottles. I will try the beer in a couple of weeks. 

Smoked Mild Brewday

I like smoky beers. The first one I ever consumed, before I was 21 and before I knew much about beer, was the Alaskan Smoked Porter. That was more than ten years ago. What recently got me started on smoked beer was of course the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, an intensely smoky Märzen-style lager from Bamberg, Germany. That beer almost has an overwhelming smokiness that makes it hard to drink more than a pint. The smoked porters, a couple of smoked brown ales, and a few other smoky beers that I have sampled were less ham-like in taste, but nonetheless feature a prominent smokiness.

So for this recipe I am going for a beer with a prominent but not overwhelming smokiness, combined with a relatively low alcohol content. The recipe is based on one found in Smoked Beers, with a few modifications. The original recipe calls for all Weyerman malts, but the LHBS didn't have them all, so I made some substitutions. Also the smoked malt is cherry-smoked, which is supposed to have a less bacon-like and more rounded flavor.

Smoked Mild - 3.25gal
3# 4oz Munich Light
1# 6oz Cherry Smoked Malt
0# 7oz Crystal 60L
0# 4oz Black Patent

5/8oz Willamette, 4.2%AA, 60 min
3/8oz Willamette, 4.2%AA, 15 min

Safale S-04 Dry Yeast, fermented at 62F.

Mash at 152F for 60 mins

Expected OG/ FG at 70% efficiency: 1.039 / 1.011 / 3.7%ABV
Expected IBUs: 23

9/24/12
Hit my mash temps OK, with a degree or two of variation between the top of the mash and the bottom of the mash. Stirred it a little to even things out. At the end of the mash the temps looked about right.

Recirculated a few quarts and collected about 2.3 of first running, more than target. Reduced my sparge water from 2 gal to about 1.75 gal to compensate, and ended up with almost exactly 4 gallons of pre-boil wort, if the numbers on the side of my bottling bucket are correct.

Pre-boil OG was pretty high: 1.036. Zowie, that was around 83% efficiency. How did that happen? Perhaps my system is more efficient at small beer volume. It's also possible that I mismeasured the amount of grain and ended up with more than needed, but I weighed the grain on my kitchen scale and it looked correct. In any case, the actual OG for 3.25 gallons of wort will be around 1.047. Meh! Perhaps I could dilute the beer a little?

Cooled beer to 100F using the IC, then placed the covered brew kettle in a tub of 66F water to cool it down to pitching temps. I'll only need to pitch 1/2 of the dry yeast package to get the right number of yeast cells.

Transferred, aerated and pitched 1/2 of the yeast packet into a 3 gal Better Bottle about three hours later when the beer was 70F.  Placed the better in a tub of 62F water which I will cool with ice. I got almost exactly three gallons of beer and 1/4 gallon of trub left in the pot. So, it appears that my system boils off about .75 gal / hr. Awesome!

9/24/12 - 11am. The bottle was sitting in 60F water. The krausen was starting to form with slow airlock activity.  The beer appears as dark as a porter or stout but I hope by the time it gets to my glass it will be a nice brown or reddish color.

10/3/12 - Bottled today with 1.3oz sugar, aiming for about 1.85 volumes of CO2. I got 27 x 12oz bottles, or about 2.6 gallons. Less that I was hoping for but the gravity was higher than expected. The FG was 1.017.  If my measurements of volume are correct that equals 3.9% ABV.

American Brown Tasting

Wanting a cheaper American brown ale than the very tasty but relatively pricey Janet's Brown Ale, a few weeks ago I brewed the Dirty Water Brown, also from Brewing Classic Styles (though I had to substitute the hops). The results are quite pleasant, but unsurprisingly not as distinctive and enjoyable as the Janet's Brown. My first tasting was three weeks after brewing, at which point it had a "green" taste. It has however improved significantly since then. Again, more and more I have seen that most of my brews should not be consumed at less than a month old.

Appearance: Coppery brown in color with moderate chill haze despite that this bottle has been in the fridge for 5 days. Good off-white head from the initial pour, which over time fades to a light coating of bubbles on the surface of the beer and sticks to the side of the glass.

Aroma: A good whiff of Cascade hops greets the nose upon the initial pour, combined with a slightly sweet and toasty smell. Pleasant. The hoppy smell fades as I drink, with the toastiness becoming more prominent.

Taste: A really nice combination of slightly sweet / malty / toasty character combined with a fruity hoppy character and moderate bitterness in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation, moderate body, with a slightly sweet aftertaste.

Overall: A moderately hoppy, moderately malty brown ale, well balanced between malt and hops. No alcohol bite. Not a strongly flavored beer but very pleasant. I like it a lot.

For Next Time: I don't think I would change anything with this one except for finding some way to reduce the chill haze. I did put Irish moss in the boil. Maybe I could make improvements to the wort chiller or boil more vigorously?

Flanders Red Brewday

Collecting Wort

This will be my first sour beer done with souring in the fermentation rather than through sour-mashing. Though it will take at least a year to be ready, I hope the results will be worth it since beers in this style tend to be very interesting taste wise and, if bought commercially, expensive.

I will be doing a 2-week primary fermentation in a plastic bucket. The beer will then age on oak cubes in a 3-gallon glass carboy in the basement, where the ambient temps range from 72F in the summer to I'm guessing 60F in the winter. If things get too cold down there I can always move the bottle to another area of the house since they do not tend to keep it too warm in the winter.

I am not necessarily looking for an extremely assertive vinegar taste in this beer. I have had one example of the style that tasted like apple cider vinegar, but I don't want this beer to end up that way. Brewing Classic Styles recommends an oak peg be stuck in the opening of the carboy to allow in some oxygen for the Acetobacter to chew on. This should allow just the right amount of acetic acid formation. However I don't have any oak pegs lying around, nor do I know where to get one, so perhaps I can just unseal the carboy for a minute at the 6 month mark to let in some oxygen.

Pre-boil OG.

Red In the Face
Size: 3 gallons
2# 10oz Belgian Pilsner
2# 10oz Weyerman Vienna
8oz Munich
4oz Belgian Aromatic
4oz Weyerman Wheat Malt
4oz Caramunich Malt 60L
4oz Special B Malt
-------------------
6# 12oz

0.5oz Kent Goldings, 4.5% AA, 60 mins

Wyeast 3763 Roselare Blend

0.75oz Medium Toast Oak Cubes, steamed and added to secondary


Anticipated OG / FG: 1.053 / 1.013
Anticipated IBUs: 14
  

9/17/12
Mashed at 152F with 2.11gal water for 60minutes. Mash-out water of 1 gallon at boiling to bring mash-out to 165F, held for 10minutes and collected first runnings. Sparged with 2.1 gallons at 168F, held for 10 minutes and collected second runnings.

2.15gal first runnings, on target. Second runnings were about the 2.1 gal for a total pre-boil volume of 4.25, again right on target. Yay!

Pre-boil OG was  1.041, at 4.25gal, for about 70% efficiency. If I boil it to 3.25gallons, then the beer will have an OG of 1.054, again pretty much right where I wanted it. I seem to be hitting my numbers better. That's really good news.

Started heating wort at 12:09pm. Boil began at 12:40pm. The plan is to boil 90 minutes to drive away any DMS.

Boiling before hop addition.

Added 1/2 oz East Kent Golding hops after 30 minutes of boiling. Added 1/2 tsp Irish moss for the last 15mins of the boil. 

Stopped boil at 2:10, cooled to 110F, then placed the brew pot in a bin of 68F water for the beer to fully cool to pitching temps. That was around 2:40pm. Looks like a little over 3 gallons are in the pot.

10:15pm. Aerated and transferred to a plastic bucket, which was placed in 60F water. Pitched yeast after "activating" the smack pack. It was only moderately swollen and seemed to have two inner packs, both of which were smacked. I've never used one of these things before. 

9/18/12
Signs of activity in the airlock by 10:45am. Bucket was sitting in a tub of 65F water. By later in the day the activity had picked up a little.

9/19/12
11:00am - Airlock was bubbling very actively as the fermenting bucket sat in 67F water.  Added some ice to keep the fermentation temps down.

9/21/12
10am - The airlock is still bubbling about once every 10 seconds. The fermenting bucket is now sitting in 68F ambient air temps.

Beer with Star-San bubbles.

9/30/12
Transferred to a 3-gallon glass carboy and added 5/8 oz medium toast Hungarian oak cubes. The volume of beer was just over 3 gallons. Placed the carboy in the 66F basement and covered with an old bed-sheet to protect the aging beer from light. Now for the long, long wait as the beer sours and picks up some oak character over the course of a year or more. Will plan on posting occasional updates when the beer develops a pellicle, etc.
  

10/6/12

It appears that a pellicle is starting to form in a few spots on the surface of the beer. It looks like the mold that grows on bread, but I'm pretty sure its just the brett doing its thing.

A pellicle starts to form.

9/12/13
I took off the little white cap for a few minutes, twice over the course of the previous 6 months or so, in order to let in more oxygen. There didn't seem to be much of a pellicle forming, which indicated a lack of oxygen. After letting some air in, the pellicle below formed and has slowly changed during the course of fermentation. No sign of it sinking down, so the beer is not yet done. I may need to wait 18 months before bottling.



1/8/13
Finally bottled today. There was still a pellicle on top, but I've read it's OK to bottle sours even when that's the case. Used 2.5oz sugar, going for around 2.4 volumes of CO2. I added some EC-1118 yeast after re-hydrating as per the instructions on the package, and made sure to stir it into the beer adequately. I got 30 x 12oz bottles.

The beer was quite clear, with a brownish (not red) color, and a very nice cherry-apple-bretty aroma. I had enough for a hydro sample, which read 1.080. So pretty dry, and right in the range where bottle conditioning should begin. The taste of the sample was OK, but not as sour as I might want.

Placed the bottles in a 60F ambient area - a temp the wine yeast are comfortable with. I plan to wait another month or so before cracking the first bottle, though of course it would be best to wait for at least another few months before the beer really comes into its best possible flavor.

Saison Tasting

Hoping to duplicate my surprisingly successful saison (my fourth ever brew), last month I brewed another saison from the same Brewing Classic Styles recipe. I do not however expect the results to be the same, since there has probably been quite a bit of variation in my ingredients (due to the way the LHBS sold grains) and process (due to my poor fermentation temperature control) between the two brews. Nevertheless, I will be happy if this attempt is as good as my previous one.

Appearance: Hazy golden copper with a thick white head that dissipates but leaves a thin layer of bubbles over the beer. This bottle was only in the fridge for around 8 hours, so the chill haze may be reduced after more time in the fridge.

Aroma: Fruit of some kind. A combination of bananas and other yeasty esters, maybe plums. Some sweetness in the smell.

Taste: Fruity and a bit phenolic, but not unpleasantly so. A slightly "hot" aftertaste and almost a slightly sour or funky note. Slight sweetness. Kind of refreshing. A slight hint of noble-hop bitterness with attendant earthy notes.

Mouthfeel: A little bit too heavy for the style. Could use some more carbonation in my view. Not as spritzy as the style is supposed to be, but my wife and other taster did find it refreshing.

Overall: A light, fruity beer with yeasty notes and a moderately refreshing quality. Not spritzy, but well carbonated. Slight funkiness from the yeast phenolics. Pleasant, but not great. Needs a lighter body and it should be drier.

For Next Time: Control the fermentation temps better to get higher attenuation and thus less sweetness. More carbonation to get a more spritzy mouthfeel.

 

Smoked Porter Review

A little more than a month ago I brewed a Smoked Porter based on a clone recipe for Alaskan Smoked Porter. This type of smoked beer is reputed to age pretty well as the smoke flavors blend with the chocolatey, roasty, coffee tastes. I'll plan to hide away a few bottles to taste from time to time. Of course I'll post the results here.

Appearance: Dark black when poured into a pint glass, with dark brown highlights. Thin tan head that slowly dissipates but sticks to the side of the glass.

Aroma: Subtle hints of smoke. Not like bacon but a little more woody somehow. Mostly it smells like coffee or chocolate.

Where there's smoke there's fire.

Taste: Again, mostly tastes like a pretty normal porter with the complex blend of roasted, coffee and chocolate notes with a bit of smokiness. More smoke in the taste than in the aroma, with lingering smokey aftertaste. Some sweetness as it does not taste like black coffee. Minimal acrid or harsh tastes. It has some bitterness but it blends quite well with the emphasis on the roast quality. 

Mouthfeel: Moderate body and carbonation. Smooth.

Overall: A complex beer with a blend of smoke and roasted malts. Smokiness is subtle but adds to the complexity. Maltiness dominates but some bitterness in the finish. This is definitely on the top end in terms of the quality of my home brew. My wife really likes it too. Better than my previous attempt at the style.

For Next Time: While I really like the complexity of this beer and find that it does not have the undesirable acrid notes of my previous attempt at smoked porter, I was hoping for a more assertive smokiness. So, on the next brew of this style I will up the percentage of smoked malt. The freshness of the racuhmaltz also has something to do with it, since the smokiness deteriorates over time.

 

Dirty Water Brown Ale Brewday

I have brewed two of the brown ales from Brewing Classic Styles, both of which turned out very well. The Nutcastle recipe turn out with a nice nutty taste, for a pretty easy drinking British style beer. The Janet's Brown Ale had a wonderful minty quality from the Northern Brewer hops combined with some great malt flavor. In fact my own special lady likes the Janet's Brown so much that I brewed it again, although the second attempt didn't turn out as well because the grain wasn't crushed properly at the nearby LHBS since they had a crappy hand-cranked crusher that was out of adjustment. (The not-so local shop had a much better system but was obviously a longer drive away.)

However I did find the Janet's Brown to be an expensive brew because of both the high gravity and the large amount of hops needed to brew it. The below recipe is also from BCS - the Dirty Water Brown. It comes in at a lower gravity and uses less hops than the Janet's Brown, so it will be more feasible to brew it often. Not sure if the wife will like it as much, but we'll see...

Dirty Water Brown
3.5 gallons (4.5 gal boil, 3.25 into fermenter, 3 into bottles)
5# 12oz American 2-Row Malt
0# 4oz Chocolate Malt
0# 4oz Crystal 40L
0# 2oz Crystal 60L
0# 2oz Victory Malt
------------
6# 10oz

.3oz Horizon, 12%AA, 60min
.5oz Cascade, 9%AA, 15min
1.25oz Cascade, 9%AA, flameout

US-05 Yeast

Expected OG / FG: 1.048 / 1.013
Expected IBUs: 36
Expected SRM: 20, light-medium brown

Brewed 8/25/12
Today for a variety of reasons my my note-taking was a little lax. Sorry, none of my amazingly beautiful pictures today. Meh!

Calculated mash and sparge volumes using .2gal / lbs of water absorption by grain. This proved to be on the high side, resulting in too much wort. But I did hit my mash temps exactly, with 152F for the mash and 166F for the mash-out.

Made a 1L yeast starter with recycled US-05. Pitched the starter yeast at around 2:30pm

Started mash around 2pm.

First runnings were about 2.5 gallons, 1/4 gallon above target. Second runnings were nearly five-gallons, again above target.

Boiled for 90 minutes, the first 25 of which were split because my 5-gallon brewpot can't safely boil more than 4.75 gallons. When the wort in the small pot was reduced in volume I poured it back into the main pot.

Also I followed the advice in Brewing Better Beer to steep the dark grains for 5 minutes rather than adding them to the mash. I placed the chocolate malt into a nylon mesh bag, steeped at 165F for 5 minutes, strained the grains, and then poured the resulting dark liquid into the boil. Apparently this process reduces the ashy, acrid and harsh flavors associated with tannins and such that can be extracted when dark grains are mashed. 

Cooled with the IC to 110F, then placed the brewpot in a bin of 69F water, at around 4:45pm.

The post-boil hydromenter sample read 1.043. A few points off because I collected more wort than predicted.  Efficiency was a little less than usual, around 67%.

At 11:45pm the starter was bubbling away. Transferred and aerated the wort into the fermentor leaving behind the trub. The wort was nice and clear because it had time to settle in the brew pot. Got about 3.6 gallons, a bit more than planned. Pitched the starter and placed some ice packs in the bucket where the beer was sitting.

8/26/12, 8:45am. The beer was at 68F and actively fermenting. Put some new ice in the water bath to keep the fermentation temps in check.

8/27, 9am. Fermentation still active. Freshened with new ice-packs.

9/6, 3pm. Bottled today with 1.75oz table sugar and .5 oz brown sugar, aiming for about 2 volumes. Got 6 x 22oz, 25 x 12oz = 432oz or about 3.4 gallons. In the bottling bucket it looked more like 3.6 gallons or so. Hmm. The hydo sample tasted good. Review to follow in a few weeks.

Berliner Weisse Tasting

A few weeks ago I made my first sour beer, Ich bin ein Berliner Weisse, by sour-worting for about 20 hours, followed by a 15 minute boil. The sour-worting technique avoids the long aging times necessary for the "bugs" to do their thing, but can be an unpredictable process because the conditions of the sour wort and the growth rate of the microorganisms can be hard to control.

Appearance: Hazy straw yellow. White head with small bubbles that disappear quickly but leave a white lacing around the side of the glass.

Aroma: Lemony, with some sourness and a hint of funkiness - not putrid exactly but a slight whiff of trashy smell.

Taste: Mildly sour. Not puckering by any means. No bitterness. The funky weirdness of the smell is not present in the taste. Not a complex taste.

Body: Spritzy due to the carbonation of about 3 volumes. A bit tingly on the the tounge, again because of the high carbonation and low gravity.

Overall:  A mildy sour, lemony beer with light body. Refreshing and drinkable. Slight funkiness, so not a completely "clean" sour flavor. Overall pleasant but not a strongly flavored beer. Good refreshing summer beer.

For Next Time: Longer sour mash to get a much more prominent sour smell and taste. Perhaps inoculate the wort with a commercial tube of Lactobacillus. The sour mash of only 12 - 24 hours, though recommended as a good starting point, has not in this case produced a very sour beer (to my palette), certainly not compared to the reference beer I used, Bell's Oarsman (which BTW is itself only considered mildly sour).

Update: As of August 31, the slightly trashy smell is no longer present. I'm not sure why or how. I am really seeing the value of aging homebrew at least 5-6 weeks before drinking it, as many harsh or weird flavors seem to disappear as the bear ages. 

Saison Brewday

I brewed the Saison recipe from Brewing Classic Styles last summer. It turned out very well. One of my best brews and closely resembling Saison DuPont, at least to my palette. The beer also tasted to me very similar to a hefeweissen but without so much of the banana overtones and sweet bready body. In any case I hope to duplicate my success, although I suspect the results of this one will be different, especially considering my temperature control issues.

Saison
3.25 gallon batch
6# 2oz Belgian Pils
0# 8oz Munich Malt
0# 8oz Wheat Malt
0# 8oz Cane Sugar
0# 1oz Caramunich 60L
--------
7# 11oz fermentables
(Only 6# 3oz in mash, add sugar during boil). 

1oz Hallertau, 4.3% AA, 60 mins
.5oz Hallertau, 4.3% AA, flameout

Brookline, MA water, with 1/2 tsp gypsum
1/2 tsp Irish moss @ 15 min

90 minute mash at 147F
90 minute boil to drive off DMS
Target pre-boil volume is 4.25 gallons

27 IBUs
Expected OG / FG: 1.065 / 1.004 at 70% efficiency

WLP56 - Belgian Saison I, start fermentation at 68F and allow to free rise over the course of 3-4 week primary to 80F or more.

7/28/12, 11:40am
Dough in with 2.25 gal at 158F. Ten minutes later the mash was right where I wanted it, at 147F. Aiming for a dry beer here.

1:10pm, added .96 gal boiling mash-out water.

2:20pm, boil started. Pre-boil OG was 1.049 at 4.25 gallons. (Including the sugar.) Approximately 70% efficiency, as I was hoping. If the final volume is 3.25 gal this will hit my target OG right on.

4:15pm, wort was around 100F. Placed in 70F basement to cool before transferring to fermenter and pitching, which I will probably do later this evening. My wort chiller still leaks at a few places. Extremely annoying.

7:00pm, transferred wort to plastic bucket and aerated. The wort was like 80F or so but I put the bucket into a bin filled with 65F water and some ice blocks. Pitched yeast. Got very slightly less than 3 gallons.

7/29/12, 6:45pm
No bubbling in the airlock yet, but clearly the pressure in the bucket is building up because the airlock is looking like bubbles will soon start coming. Also the wort is sitting in 68F water.

7/30/12, 4pm
I was getting really worried that something was wrong because there were no bubbles in the airlock. I opened the top of the bucket to see a thick krausen with lots of yeast on top. After I replaced the bucket and airlock there were lots of bubbles. There was probably an air leak somewhere. Anyway. the bucket is in a pool of 70F water. In a couple of days I will take the beer to a warmer place, like the attic or garage, for it to ferment at the warm temps necessary for it to completely finish with the right fruity / spicy mix.

7/31/12, 4pm
Active fermentation appears to have stopped or dramatically slowed. Moved fermenter and bin of water to the garage, where ambient temps are currently 75F. During the days the temps will likely go to the mid-80s and at night will be in the high-60s. At any rate I hope that the high temps will encourage the fussy saison yeast to complete fermentation. Last time I brewed this beer, for the first few days of fermentation I kept the fermenter in cool water and then took it out. The bucket sat in my apartment, which probably never went below 75F and during the afternoons probably went up to the 85F - 90F range as the sun came through the windows. The beer turned out well that time. I hope to repeat that success.

8/18/12
After three weeks of fermenting the gravity was down to 1.005. Great! The beer had a good estery smell but I detected a slightly sulfury quality which I hope will go away. Bottled with 2.6oz sugar. Got slightly less that 3 gallons. Collected some of the leftover yeast for use in an upcoming funky table saison, which I plan to ferment with WLP565 and Brettanomyces.

Smoked Porter Brewday

I have been studying for the Massachusetts bar exam for the last two months. Fortunately I have made it through the hazing ritual (whether or not successfully, I don't know) intact enough to spend the next few days relaxing and brewing beer.

I have attempted this recipe before but the resulting beer did not have any hint of the smokey flavor that it should have. It was chocolatey, coffee-like and roasty. It got a 35 in a local competition in the porter category. What most likely happened was that the local home brew store sold me the wrong grain. Instead of rauchmaltz I ended up with amber malt or something. This time I bought my grain from Brewmaster's Warehouse. The Brewbuilder feature of that store is pretty cool since it lets you build and buy your own recipes, each of which will come in its own sealed plastic bag. Anyway, I hope this attempt will yield a prominent smoked flavor like the Alaskan Smoked Porter. (The Stone Smoked Porter is good too but has only a subtle background of smoke, in my view.) The recipe comes from an old issue of BYO. You can easily find it on the interwebs.

Alaskan Smoked Porter Clone 
3.25 gallon batch

4# 8oz Briess 2-Row Brewers Malt
1# 10oz Briess Smoked Malt
1# Weyerman Pale Ale
0# 8oz Crisp Chocolate Malt
0# 6oz Briess Caramel 40L
0# 4oz Crisp Black Patent
---
8# 4oz Total Grain

0.5oz Chinook, 13.9%AA, 60 min
0.5oz Willamette, 7.5% AA, 15 min

Safale US-05

Anticipated OG / FG: 1.063 / 1.017 (70% Mash efficiency)
Anticipated IBU: 51 (Tinseth)
Anticipated SRM: 45

-----------------
7/27/12
Dough-in with 2.58 gallons of 165F water. Wow, got a nice whiff of smokey almost bacon like smell. 10 minutes later the actual mash temp was 152F. A couple of degrees lower that target, but that will probably be OK.

Got my first runnings. Ended up with 2.8 gallons or so. I must have screwed up the measurements for the mash-out water volume because I was only supposed to get 1.88gal of 1st runnings. Crap! Added 2nd runnings water, reduced so that I hope to get only 3.75 gal of pre-boil wort. If more I can boil longer to reduce the volume of wort and hit the right OG.

Got about 4.3 gal of pre-boil wort - more than I calculated. Boiled for 90 minutes.

Put almost exactly 3 gallons into the 3-gal Better Bottle when the wort was around 85F. Let sit in 65F water to cool to pitching temps.

Did not take a gravity reading. That was dumb. Also some equipment issues because my wort chiller was leaking a bit at the intersection b/t the plastic tubing and the copper tubing.

Ack, a dog hair may have gotten into the fermenter! Or maybe it is a long string of coagulated trub protein.

Pitched around 11:15pm, when beer was at about 72F. Let sit in 65F water bath.

7/28/12, 4pm
Krausen is forming. May have to bust out the blow-off tube pretty soon.

7/29/12, 6:30pm
Very active fermentation with a think brown krausen. Surprisingly though it is not blowing an schmutz out of the airlock.

8/11/12
Bottled today with 2oz sugar. FG was 1.015. Got 28 bottles, plus about 14oz of beer left in the bucket / hydrometer sample. The uncarbonated beer tasted like a mix of chocolate, coffee and smoke. Tasting to come in a week or two.

Oaked English Barleywine Tasting

Yesterday, in celebration of surviving the Massachusetts bar exam, I opened a bottle of Oaked English Barleywine that I brewed in early November 2011 and bulk aged for a few months on medium-toast oak cubes. The recipe is from Brewing Classic Styles.

I still intend to age this until around Thanksgiving at which point it will go well with the cold weather and heavy food. Perhaps I will let a six-pack age for a few years. However, this beer has not been stored properly, as it was aged in a basement around 65F-70F and taken on a 650 mile drive in the back of a U-Haul in late May. Apparently the best way to store beer is at a constant temperature of 40F or so. Oxidation may also be an issue. In theory, however, bottle-conditioned beers like this one are protected somewhat from the aging by the biological activity of the yeast.

A drink for sitting by the fireplace.

Oaked English Barleywine
11# English 2-Row Pale
0# 8oz Crystal 40L
0# 8oz Crystal 120L
Magnum bittering hops, Kent Goldings flavor and aroma.

Expected IBU: 66

3 gallon batch.

British Ale - WLP005 - Ferment at 68F.

Brewed 11/11/2011

Actual OG / FG: 1.092 / 1.022
About 9.8% ABV.

Ferment 4 weeks, transfer to secondary with .75 boiled oak cubes. Store 3-4 months.

Bottle with 1.75oz sugar and rehydrated Nottingham yeast.

---------
Take these notes with a grain of salt. I already had drank a few beers before this one and now I'm recalling what it tasted like last night.

Appearance: Slight brownish head that quickly dissipates but leaves some bubbles clinging to the side of the glass. Ruddy, brown color. Really hazy despite that this bottle was in the fridge for two weeks before pouring. Not sure if it is chill haze, yeast disturbed from the bottom of the bottle, or tannins from the Oak. The mud-like color is not appealing and I wish the head were a better.

Aroma: Complex. Sweet malt, dried fruit and moderate oakiness. Slight earthy hop aroma. Pretty nice.

Taste: Again complex. Sweet malty taste balanced by oaky tannins and dark fruit like raisins or plums. A little bit of hot alcohol particularly in the aftertaste. Hop bitterness is in there somewhere.

Mouthfeel: Sweet and a little bit heavy but not as syrupy as port wine. Low to moderate carbonation.

Overall: A complex, alcoholic beer with strong flavors of malt, dried fruit and oak. A sipping beer best suited for the cold winter months and paired with heavy food or as a desert beer.
-----

So I think this one will be pretty good as long as the sub-optimal storage conditions and potential for oxidation do not destroy the beer. I will write another post in November when this beer is about a year old.

Lübecker Hefeweissen Tasting

My first attempt at hefeweissen was brewed on June 16 and has been sitting in bottles for about three weeks. So its about 5 weeks old. I unwisely first tasted it when it was only three weeks old, after which I feared that it would be undrinkable. The first bottle was a weird grayish color with a boring taste. It was so uninspiring I though that I might need to dump the whole batch.

Fortunately the beer has improved somewhat but it is not what I would like it to be. I drank a Paulaner Hefeweizen a few days ago as an exemplar of the style. My own beer is OK and drinkable but not nearly as good as the Paulaner.

Appearance: Good white head with nice lacing. Liquid is light yellow, with a slight grayishness. When first poured it is quite clear but with the yeast it takes on a bit more haziness. It's not quite as bright golden yellow in color like a nice German wheat beer should be.

Aroma: Smells only slightly fruity. Not a strong smell.

Taste: Like the smell it does not have a real banana smell. The phenolic / clove character is there but it clearly should have some more banana flavor. Also lacks the bready, sweet taste of a good wheat beer.

Mouthfeel: A little bit over-carbonated but the lack of sweetness and body makes it seem a little thin and not bready enough. A little bit like a thin and dry saison.

Overall: Drinkable but by no means what I was aiming for. The lack of banana taste is the most disappoint aspect of the beer. I'd also like some more body in the beer. Perhaps my fermentation temperature control is not quite up to the task but that said I would like to try again because to me good hefe is magnificent.

For Next Time:

•  Use a direct heated step mash so that I can get better efficiency and to hit my temps correctly. Hit 112F, 152F and 167F, then transfer to the MLT and sparge w/ 170F water.
• Do not use Irish moss.
• Try to ferment at the right 62F temperature.
• Perhaps use a different brand of yeast. Apparently the WLP300 is not as good as the Wyeast wheat yeast. Also I have though of culturing some yeast from Sierra Nevada Summer Wheat.   

Side Note: How do you get good photos of your beer so that the photo looks like what you see with your eyes?                                                           

Brewing Books

I have amassed a small collection of brewing related books. Although a huge amount of information and recipes are available on the interwebs from various blogs, forums, etc... having this information organized into books by recognized experts is invaluable.

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, Charlie Papazian
Like many homebrewers this is what got me started. I had been wanting to try homebrewing for a while, but after seeing this book on the shelf and reading it over I decided to finally try it out. I relied on this book during my first few brews and still sometimes refer to it. That said I have not tried any of the recipes, and the level of detail in this book is relatively basic.

How to Brew, John Palmer
I have read only the free on-line version, not the expanded print version. Again, I use this as a reference book but have not brewed any of the recipes. The book has more technical and up-to-date material than the Papazian book, and covers additional topics like cooler-MLTs, metallurgy, batch sparging, and others not found in the Papazian book.

Brewing Classic Styles, Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer
Mostly a collection of recipes with a small how-to about brewing process. Generally assumes that the reader knows how to brew, so this is not a beginner's book. The recipes all come with good information about the style, the best process to use to achieve a good example of that style, and general tips for each type of recipe presented.

I have brewed the Nut Brown, the Saison, the American IPA, the Stout, the English Barleywine, the Hefeweissen, and soon, the Flanders Red from this book. The recipes seem to be pretty good, though since I may not have brewed them quite properly it can be hard to tell. (My Nut Brown, Saison and Stout turned out pretty well, the American IPA not quite.) The recipes are generally conservative rather than boundary pushing or experimental. This is because they are designed to win competitions, in which the judges often assign points more on the basis of fidelity to existing style rather than on the basis of innovation. You will not find any whiskey barrel-aged vanilla bean stouts in here.

Smoked Beers, Ray Daniels and Geoff Larson
I like Rauchbiers and smoked porters for their rustic, campfire taste. This book covers their history and the techniques used to smoke malt and brew smoked beers. I have only so far brewed the Stoffla (as an ale though), an obscure Franconian style with a sour-smokey taste. (I used acid-malt as called for in the recipe.) It turned out well, but not having a reference beer or style guideline I cannot say if it tasted as the recipe is supposed to taste. I plan to brew the smoked mild at some point, and if / when I have the capacity to lager, the Bamberger-style Rauchbier. Probably a book only for those enthusiastic about smokey beer. 

The Complete Homebrew Beer Book, George Hummel
This was given as a gift to me. I have never brewed a recipe from this book but they generally look pretty good, although they are all extract only, or sometimes partial mash. The process information is very basic, however, as the book is designed for beginners. It recommends 70F - 72F fermentation temp for all ales, as well as to secondary all of its beer. In my view, these are both bad ideas. Also it provides little in the way of description of each beer. So, good source recipes, but follow a better process.

Brewing Better Beer, Gordon Strong
Billed as a manual for advanced brewers, this book reads more like a "philosophical" treatise rather than a how-to guide. It generally does not have detailed instructions for improving your technique, but rather general pointers, ideas and themes. The section on steeping dark grains is, however, pretty specific as to the technique for reducing the acrid or harsh taste of highly roasted grains. The part on using first wort hops and "hop bursting" is also pretty useful. Finally I liked that part about different mash schedules and sparging techniques. By tuning the mash type and sparge technique to the style you are going for you can get really good results. Overall a pretty good book but in my view it does need to be more specific in its recommendations and discussions of various techniques. Unlike some reviewers, I did not find the tone of the book to be overly arrogant or self-centered although I can see how some might view it that way. It really is however, a treatise on Strong's method of brewing.

Tasting Beer, Randy Mosher
Aimed at a general audience of people interested in beer, this book does not focus on homebrewing. But it does contain a good history of beer, a description of various styles, tips on developing your palette for beer and detecting off-flavors, and pairing beer with foods. Highly recommended, but as Mosher says, the best way to really become a connoisseur is to taste a lot of beers, take notes, and become a beer judge.

On my list to read is Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. After a quick browse, it appears to offer quite a bit of in-depth technical process advice as well as style advice. I will report back later. 

Cascade Session IPA Tasting

About three weeks ago I brewed a Cascade Session IPA intended to be a low-alcohol hoppy beer appropriate for drinking in quantity over the summer. Today, on this momentous occasion, I taste the results of my tremendous effort. Oh wait, the occasion is momentous and the effort was not tremendous. But I digress.

Appearance: Hazy orange in color. White three finger head that dissipates over a few minutes to a very thin covering of foam. Head leave a small lacing over the sides of the glass.

Aroma: Tropical fruit hop smell like grapefruit or so. Not quite as strong as I'd like though. Smell persists even as I continue to drink.

Can I interest you in my banana?

Taste: Slight fruity hop taste, with moderate bitterness. A metallic taste (similar to the undesirable aftertaste on my previous attempt at a hoppy beer) predominates in the middle and end of my sip. I hoped to get a bold, fruity bitterness from the Cascade hops. I'm not sure if that good taste is hiding under the metallic quality or if it is just absent completely.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation, but it doesn't feel thin. It doesn't have the resiny tounge coating quality of some hoppy beers or the body and maltiness of bigger IPAs. It's pretty dry though.

Overall Impression: Nice hoppy smell, good appearance, but the taste is not what I want. I'd like a grapefruit type flavor from the Cascade hops and a smooth bitterness.

Issue: WTF is the metallic taste??? Could it be a little bit of rust from the non-stainless steel in my MLT (now replaced by stainless)? Could it be a by product of over or underpitching? What about the water?? Arg!

For Next Time: Increase the late addition hops to get better smell. Find and destroy the source of the metallic taste. Cool the wort as fast as possible to pitching temps. Pitch the correct amount of yeast.

------

Currently most of the bottles are sitting in a dark basement room at about 68F. Perhaps the beer will get better over the next few weeks. If so I may post again on this beer. 

Sour Wort Berliner Weisse

I have wanted to try to make a sour or funky beer for a while. Most of the sour beer recipes in Brewing Classic Styles and on The Mad Fermentationist call for at least a year of aging because the "bugs" do not work as quickly as beer yeast to consume the sugars in the beer. For a number of reasons the requirement of allowing most sour beers to age for a really long time has not allowed me to brew those styles, although that has recently changed. Still, I want to try the easiest method for getting a sour beer before attempting a sour that needs to have a lengthy aging period.

With a sour mash technique to impart the requisite acidity of a Berliner Weisse it is not necessary to store the beer a long time. As I understand it the basic idea behind the sour mash is to perform a regular mash, raise to 170F, then either 1) allow the beer to cool to between 115F - 120F or 2) sparge, collect the desired amount of wort, and cool to between 115F - 120F At that point, a handful of grain can be tossed in the mash or wort, inoculating it with Lactobacillus bacteria that, over the course of anywhere from a few hours to a few days, will turn the wort sour. Eventually it should have a "clean" sour smell like a sourdough starter for bread. But the process is variable since you never know what "bugs" will end up in the mash. If the mash smells putrid, vomitty or fecal then something other than Lactobacillus is present.

Once the souring is complete the wort can be boiled to kill the souring bugs and fix the level of sourness. Regular yeast can be used to ferment the remainder of the beer. 

So this beer is a bit of an experiment since I might pick up some bad bugs during the sour mash. If so, I can discard the mash if it smells really terrible or see if the foul smells can be boiled away to get a cleaner beer. I would prefer to just go from grain to glass, tossing only if the end product is really terrible. At least it's a cheap recipe.

How much of the mash or wort to sour? Dave Green of Brew Your Own recommends souring only part of it unless a very sour flavor is desired. Brewing Classic Styles suggests that the whole wort can be soured for an assertive sourness characteristic of the style. The blog Brain Sparging on Brewing suggests a partial sour mash unless you want the beer really sour. I did see somewhere a suggestion to sour the whole mash for a Berliner Weisse here but some feedback on that thread indicated that the very low pH of a soured wort requires a TON of yeast to ferment properly. Well I'll pitch an entire packet of US-05. I hope that's enough.

So I've seen differences of opinions. Ten brewers, fifteen different methods....

What I will try is the full wort method, souring by tossing into the wort 4oz of grain. This is experimental. Perhaps the best way to find what works is simply to experiment, see what the results are, etc... Think of this blog entry as the notes to an experiment.

Ich bin ein Berliner Weisse
Volume: 3 gallons

2.5 lbs Belgian Pilsner
1.0 lbs Weyerman Pale Wheat
(0.25oz extra grain as an innoculant) 

Mash at 149F for 75 mins, or until iodine test indicates complete conversion.

0.5 oz Hallertau pellets, 3.9%AA - 15mins  - 7 IBU's

Boil Time: 15 mins

Expected OG: 1.031
Expected FG: 1.008
Expected ABV: 3.1%

Yeast: Safale US-05

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The Mash

7/3/12
4:12pm
Preheated cooler with 1.1 gallons brewing water at 165F or so. Dough-in when water was at 160F. Hit my mash temp almost exactly - mash was at 150F after 15mins of mash. Reserved the extra 4oz grain for later use.  At 5:10pm, mash was at 148F. Started heating mash-out and sparge water. 

5:25pm
Added .9 gallons of mash-out water at boiling.  After a brief stir the mash was right on target at 167F - 168F. Yay!

5:35pm
Actual mash temp was 165F. Not bad. Recirculated 4 qts., collected 1.6 gallons first runnings.

5:40pm
Added sparge water at 170F. Stirred gently. Actual mash temp was 166F. Started boil of grain bag and a marble to sanitize.

5:50pm
Recirculated and collect 2nd runnings. Ended up with almost exactly 3 gallons in my bottling bucket. Cleaned out my MLT, then transferred the wort into the the cooler so that its temperature is relatively stable over the souring period. Took a small sample of wort for the hydrometer. Temperature of the wort in the cooler was 145F. Left outside without the top of the cooler. Wait for wort to cool to 125F or so before inoculating with grain.....

6:49pm

Wort plus inoculant, covered with foil.

Wort was at about 132F. Hydrometer reading said I got 1.031 pre-boil OG. This equates to 71.8% efficiency. In the typical range of 68% - 72% when I do a batch sparge the right way.

7:03pm
Wort was at 128F. Will inoculate soon. Apparently the Lactobacillus cannot survive about 131F, but the by adding the grain the temp of the wort will drop. Still, I want to be sure that the nice little bugs survive.

7:15pm
Wort was at 128F still. Added unmashed grains to the sanitized bag with marble. Gently placed into the wort. The grains sank. Placed sanitized aluminum foil over the wort and put the top back on the cooler. Temperature reading (with sanitized thermometer) was 126F. Perfect!

Now, the suspense! Will it smell cleanly sour? Will it smell like vomit? Stay tuned......

7/4/12
10:00am
Wort was at about 100F. Smell was slightly sour but not assertively so. A few krausen bubbles had formed under the foil Taste was also a bit sour but not puckering. Actually rather pleasant - a kind of sweet and sour mix. I want a nice, assertive sourness. Pulled about two cups of wort, heated on stove to boiling, and added back. A few minutes later the temp was only 105F.

10:10am
Pull about a quart, heated to boil, added back. At 10:20am the wort was at 115F. The wort has been souring for 15 hours.

1:10pm
Wort was at 108F. Smelled cleanly sweet-sour but not strongly so. 

3:00pm
Tasted a very small sample of the wort. It tasted sour to me. And smelled sour. About 20 hours after inoculation. Transferred wort to boil kettle. Wife thought it smelled sour too. Proceed as per normal brew day.....

3:45pm
Wort was around 95F when my chiller could cool it no further (at least without using a huge amount of water.) Transferred to 3-gallon better bottle, placed in basement of 67F ambient air.

8:35pm
Pitched dry yeast into 70F wort. Better Bottle was in 62F water. Followed directions on yeast packet - simply sprinkled it on top of the wort. I then shook the carboy to distribute the yeast and aerate a little bit.

7/5/12, 11am
Krausen forming. The beer is in a tub of 66F water.

7/612, 8:45am
High krausen has passed. Airlock no longer bubbling. That was a fast fermentation.