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.