West Coast IPA

Of all the beers that I'd really like to get good at brewing, probably IPA is at the top of the list. No matter what the season or the circumstances, a good IPA with a wallop of hop aroma and flavor will always hit the spot. None of my IPA have been great, but they're slowly getting better. We'll see how this one goes....

This recipe came from a blog called West Coast Brewing and although I know nothing about the brewer, he and his buddies seem to like it, so why not. Plus, it doesn't call for an enormous (and expensive) volume of hops, potentially making it an efficient way to brew a good IPA. (Saving on hops, not too much beer lost to absorption by the hops.)

I did a double brew-day with two guys in the homebrewing club. The other beer was a Bitter, for which we used my larger cooler mash tun and its stainless bazooka screen. The tun performed well, although it seemed to loose more wort to tun deadspace than my round cooler.

The cooler, on the other hand, wouldn't stop leaking. So I just mashed in my kettle and used the tun to sparge. Probably this resulted in some efficiency loss, but that's OK. Anyway, it's always a work in progress. Eventually I will find the right combination of hardware pieces to fully seal the round cooler with the new 1/2" fittings and CPVC manifold.

West Coast IPA
 3-Gallons

6# US 2-Row
10oz C40
6oz C20

.5oz Centenial, 9.7%AA, first wort
.75oz Centenial, 9.7%AA, 20min
.5oz Centenial, 9.7%AA, 10min
.5oz Cascade, 6.4%AA, 0min
1.5oz Cascade, 6.4%, dry, 7 days

US-05 Yeast

2grams Gypsum
1gram CaCl

Mash @152F, 1 hour

1 hour boil

Expected OG/FG/IBU/ABV: 1.046 / 1.011 / 4.5 / 59

Brewed on 12/14/13

Initial Mash temps were good, but the kettle doesn't hold heat too well, so I had to use direct heat and stir. Sparge was OK but probably not hot enough.

Pre-Boil OG was in the 1.035 range, so I added 1lb of dry malt extract to compensate, and get rid of some of the extract I had lying around.

Boil went fine. Got a nice vigorous boil but I suspect I was over my target volume a bit.

Cooled to around 110F using my immersion chiller , and transferred to Better Bottle, being careful not to aerate.  It was about 25F and snowing outside, so I just let the Better Bottle sit outside for a while, until it felt cool to the touch. This took about 3 hours.

Pitched around 7pm, and shook the vigorously to aerate.

Let the BB sit in a tub of water, around 60F ambient. 

12/16/13, 6pm - About a quarter inch of krausen has formed.

12/17/13, 6pm - Fermentation is more active, with maybe 3/4" - 1" of krausen.

12/18/13, 6:15pm - Fermentation is even more active. Likely to be high krausen.

12/24/13 - After moving the carboy on 12/22/13 to a room temperature area to finish up, fermentation is now going very slowly and the yeast is starting to sink. I guess the low temps in the basement really keep fermentation slow.

12/26/13 - Racked to secondary and added the dry hops.

1/3/13 - Bottled, going for 2 units of carbonation. Got about 1.25 gallons - 24 * 12oz and a few 22oz bottles. The sample tasted good, with an OK aroma.

Equipment Upgrades

Part of the reason I've been brewing relatively infrequently during October and November is that I've decided to spend some time, money and effort on upgrading my mashing equipment a bit to make things more efficient, easier to use, more reliable, and ultimately able to produce better beer.

After this I really don't want to spend any more money on equipment for a long while. I'd rather just buy ingredients and brew beer.

Upgrade 1: Improved Manifold for the 5-gallon MLT
While the hose-braid that I have been using as a lautering manifold has worked reasonably well, it seemed to have a tendency to get compressed or deformed during the mash, with the result that it essential got all clogged and would not allow wort through. So I decided to build a PVC manifold like the one described at this post. Fortunately, someone posted the plans for a version of this manifold that would fit into a 5-gallon cooler like mine. Note that like the second upgrade, this requires a 1/2" bulkhead to work.

There were two main annoyances here. First was getting the bulkhead installed so that it didn't leak, but now it seems that I've done it correctly, using a similar method to my previous 3/8" bulkhead - neoprene washers, stainless washers, and O-rings, very tightly pushed up against the wall of the cooler by the ball valve on the outside and the CPVC fitting on the inside.

The second annoyance was finding the 1/2" CPVC pipe at Home Depot, which seemed to be out of it at the closest location, so I had to drive to another location which ate up a lot of time.

Once I had the pipe, sawing pieces to the appropriate lengths and fitting them together and slotting them was pretty easy, using a pipe saw I picked up for $8 at Home Depot. Fortunately, the lengths of the pieces do not need to be completely accurate. Once I had assembled the octagon, I tested to make sure it fit underneath the bulkhead assembly. It did, however, the bulkhead could not connect to the manifold using a straight piece of pipe. So I connect a short piece of pipe to the elbow on the octagon and to the bulkhead, then fit a piece of 1/2" ID high-temp tubing around each piece.

The sawing created a lot of CPVC sawdust. I tried as best I could to clean it out of the pipes but pushing a dowel through each segment. Note that I also sanded off the markings on the outside of the pipe and use nail polish remover to get rid of the stickers and glue that were attached to a few of the T-joints, since I didn't want those things to get into my beer.

Voila!

I plant to test it out on my next beer, which will be an IPA. I've heard that this type of manifold gets better efficiency, even when batch sparging, than the hose braid I used to have.



 Upgrade 2: Large Mash Tun for Big Beers of 5-Gallon Batches
Additionally, if I want to do mashes with more than about 12 pounds of grain, or do a "normal" five gallon batch, I'll will need a bigger mash tun. I don't plan to start regularly doing 5 gallons at a time, but if I either brew with other people, or plan to do sours or other beers that take a really long time to mature, it might make sense to just do 5 gallons instead of 3 at a time. Fortunately, I swapped another person in the homebrew club for an 8-gallon kettle, and my parents had a large 10-gallon cooler lying around, so I didn't have to buy too much stuff to do this upgrade - just the bulkhead assembly, a 1/2" coupler, and a screen mesh. The only difficulty here was getting the bulkhead to be leak-free.

In the future, this MLT could be upgraded to a CPVC manifold, since the pipe came only in 10' lengths.

Upgrade 3: Better Chiller
 My DIY wort chiller works decently, but I've never been able to get it to be leak-free. Since the end of the copper tubing doesn't extend much outside the kettle, if it leaks, the leaking water can easily end up in the wort. Not good. Additionally, it tends to cool the wort near the coil much more quickly than the wort in the center of the pot. Basically, I didn't want to have to deal with these issues, the leaking especially, or get a soldering iron etc... to try to fix it. So I bought a "Wasp" chiller from Jaded Brewing, which I hope will work well. I got the recirculating arm option, in case I ever get a pump and build a recirculating Jamil-O-Chiller. 

Again, I plan to use the chiller on my next beer.

Black Forest Stout Brewday

At the request of my wife, I brewed a chocolate stout. At the request of myself, I'll be adding cherries. This recipe is a scaled version of the Black Forest Stout recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. It's supposed to be like the cake - chocolatey, sweet, cherry flavors. In other words, a desert beer.

Black Forest Stout
8.5# British Pal Ale Malt
8oz Roasted Barley
6oz Crystal 40
6oz Crystal 80
5oz Chocolate Malt

5oz Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, added during the last 5 min of the boil
3# Cherry Puree, added after fermentation has slowed

.25oz Warrior, 13.7%, 60min
.50oz Chinook, 11%, 60min

Danstar Nottingham

Expected FG / OG / IBUs / ABV: 1.066 / 1.013 / 35 / 6.9$
(Not sure if my software, BrewTarget, considers the effects of the Cherry Puree, which will raise the OG and the ABV.)

Brewed 11/10/13, with a buddy from the local brewing club

Hit my mash temps just fine.

Stuck sparge! Crap. I think that the grains were crushed quite a bit too finely. To deal with it, I added all the sparge water at once, scooped the mash into my 8gallon kettle, and heated up to sparge temps. Then scooped it back into the MLT with the valve open. I also put some of the grain into a colander over a bucket, and it slowly drained some beer into the bucket. Probably this all resulted in reduced efficiency and some extra trub material in the kettle. Not a disaster, but close, I would say.

Got about 4 gallons of wort, pre-boil.

Didn't take gravity readings before the boil, but when 15mins was left I had about 1.060, so surprisingly not bad efficiency.

Added the chocolate late in the boil. It made the beer look like boiling chocolate syrup. Dark, thick, chocolatey.

Cooled to about 110F, then let the kettle sit in the garage for a while, which by that time was around 60F. Pitched later, when the wort was about at 70F. I rehydrated the yeast this time.

11/11/13, 10:30am. The beer was bubbling slowly.

11/12/13, 6pm. Fermentation very active. The beer looks like chocolate milk.

11/13/13, 6pm. Fermentation is now quite slow in terms of airlock activity.

11/19/13, put the cherry puree into a plastic fermenting bucket and racked the beer on top of it, getting some chocolate sludge in there as well.

12/3/13, bottled, going for 2.25 units of CO2. The beer tasted of chocolate but not a whole lot of cherry. I'll try it in a week or so, assuming that the 60F in the basement is warm enough for yeast activity. There appeared to be a bit of chocolate sludge in each bottle.

Smoked Porter 3 Review

My third attempt at the smoked porter style follows the recipe in Brewing Classic Styles. My previous two attempts to brew this style sadly didn't turn out as smoky as I was hoping. Probably the smoked malt had in both cases lost some of its smoky flavor during storage. Fortunately, the malt used in this beer was likely fresh, as the beer is indeed smoky.

Appearance: Very dark brown but not quite black. Tan head that fades fairly quickly but leaves lacing where the glass meets the beer.

Aroma: Smoke dominates, but I do get some earthy hops in there. I don't get the
bacon-like smoke that some smokey beers have.

Taste: The taste is less smoke-dominant than the smell. I get some chocolatey or coffee like notes blended with the smoke. It does not have any bacony notes; in fact I would say the smoke is quite noticeable but not acrid or meaty. There's some sweetness in there too. The aftertaste is dominated by smoke and does have a slightly acrid note, in addition to some earthy hop bitterness.

Mouthfeel: Chewy, medium-low carbonation, pretty thick in body. But I don't think it has as much thickness some of my brews with oats.

Overall: To my palate, a medium smokey porter with a good balance between smoke character, coffee or chocolate character and sweetness. I like it quite a bit. A good beer for the fall and winter.

Brewing Year in Review

I started this blog on June 27, 2012. It's been a bit over a year, and so I wanted to summarize the year's brewing activities, review what went right and wrong, and plan for the next year or so of brewing.

June 2012 to October 14, 2013

Recipes Brewed and Recorded: 23

Tastings and Reviews: 20

Best Brews: American Stout; King Titus Clone ; Smoked Mild; American Brown Ale

Crappiest Brews: Hefeweissen; Cascade Session IPA; 3944 Wit

New Equipment: Turkey Fryer; Immersion Chiller with recirculating pump; 8 gallon pot for direct-heated mashes; Refractomer for easier gravity readings; Better Bottles; buckets and racking / bottling equipment for sours; measuring stick for water / wort volume; a whole bunch of bottles

Goals for Upcoming Year

1. Develop at least one house recipe of some kind that I know and can consistently brew well
2.  Improve my brewing technique and precision
1. Take gravity of 1st, 2nd runnings, pre-boil beer, and post-boil beer
2. Accurately measure the volumes of brewing water and beer
3. Accurately measure the weight of all of my ingredients 
4. Perhaps build a Jamil-O-Chiller
3. Brew styles I haven't brewed before
1. Belgian beers / Abbey Ales
2. Scottish Ales
3. Another sour 
4. A few more high-alcohol beers that I can put in some of the many bottles I have lying around
4. Do some team brews with members of the club

Russian Imperial Stout

I haven't brewed a really big beer since November 2011, when I brewed a Barleywine. (I still have 9 bottles in the basement as it approaches its 2 year mark.) For my next big beer, I'll be brewing a Russian Imperial Stout from Brewing Classic Styles, called "The Czar's Revenge" but with a couple of ingredient substitutions.

With my acquisition of an 8 gallon pot, I can now do directly heated mashes. For the RIS, I will mash the full volume of grains in the 8 gallon pot, heat to 167F for mash-out, transfer to the 5 gallon cooler, drain, and add the remaining water at 167F for the 2nd runnings to reach my pre-boil volume.

As an aside, I thought about steeping the dark grains separately to reduce harshness, as this recipe uses a lot of black patent (8%) and could potentially have some astringency. But since that is in some ways part of the style and because steeping the dark grains separately form the main mash further complicates an already complicated brew day, I decided to put all the grains in one mash.

I will be adding 1 full packet of dry yeast to the RIS. According to the calculator at Mr. Malty, only 1.1 packets of dry yeast is necessary for a beer this volume and gravity. I figure I'll be OK and won't have to worry much about under-pitching as long as I aerate well.

As for temp. control, I definitely do not want to pitch the RIS yeast too warm as that could cause nasty fusel alcohols from a very vigorous fermentation.

Russian Imperial Stout
10.5# Breiss 2-Row
1# Light DME (added to bump up the gravity, may need to add more depending on efficiency)
1.125# Black Patent
12oz Special B
6oz Caramunich I
6oz Chocolate Malt
6oz Pale Chocolate

1.25oz Warrior, 70 min
1oz Kent Goldings, 15 min
1oz Kent Goldings, 1 min

Danstar - Dry 97

Mash at 154F for 75 minutes

Assume 65% mash efficiency

Expected OG / FG / IBUs / ABV: 1.095 / 1.024 / 75 / 9.2%

10/12/13
Made a starter of washed WLP002, which I was intending to use for a parti-gyled beer, probably a mild or porter.

10/13/13
Shit! The starter showed no signs of activity. No bubbles, no krausen, nothing. I must have somehow killed the yeast. I thought about running off the 3rd runnings to make some wort for future starters, but since I do not have a pressure cooker I could not completely sterilize the wort. Botulism can survive boiling, and although the probability that boiled wort will have it, the magnitude of the harm associated with a botulism infection is high - i.e. death. So a disappointing start to the day, especially since I could have gotten another 3-gallon beer from such a huge grain bill.

Otherwise, mashed with 4.5 gallons of water at @ 167F, to reach a mash temp of 154F. Mashed for 75 minutes to assure full conversion. I kept the mash in my new 8 gallon kettle, and applied direct heat (while stirring the mash gently) to keep up the temperature.

Direct-heated the mash to 167F, rested for 10 minutes, then ladled the mash to my cooler for mashing out. Got 3.75 gallons of 1st runnings at 17.2 Brix (1.071 SG). The second runnings were at 11.4 Brix (1.046 SG). Collected around 4.75 gallons of pre-boil wort at 14.5 Brix (1.059 SG), prior to adding the extract.

My 5-gallon kettle was nearly full, and I had to be very careful to avoid a boiler-over. After about 15 minutes of boiling, I added the 1# of extract, resulting in a new gravity of 18.4B or 1.076 SG. I boiled the wort for 45 minutes or so even before adding hops, so in total I ended up boiling for around 135 minutes. Maybe I got some melanoidin flavors (OK by me in such a flavorful beer.)

After boiling, the volume of wort was pretty much right on target at 3.25 gallons. According to my refractomer, a few minutes before flameout the wort was at 24B or 1.101 SG. Yay!

Cooled to around 110F using my IC and stirring, then placed covered kettle in tub of 64F water to cool.

A few hours later the wort was at 68F. Transferred to 5 gal Better Bottle making sure to heavily aerate during transfer, and pitched entire yeast packet.  Ambient temp was 64F.

10/14/13
Around 24 hours after pitching, the wort was bubbling at a surprisingly slow pace. I think in my last IPA with this yeast it was fermenting slowly after 24 hours and then after 48 it was going much more active. In any case a restrained fermentation here is probably a good thing at this point.

10/16/13
About 48 hours after pitching, fermentation remains quite active (more active than only a day after pitching). A thick, dark brown krausen has formed and the airlock bubbles maybe once every 2 seconds.

11/2/13
Transferred to secondary. Less than three gallons in the secondary, I would guess more like 2.5 - 2.75. I considered brewing a very small batch to bring things up to volume, but that could apparently cause quality problems. Quality over quantity, especially for a beer that is as expensive and time consuming to make as this one.

Put .75oz of toasted oak chips in a sanitized mason jar along with about 2 shots of whiskey, to pre-soak and draw out some of the oak flavors.

11/11/13
Added the oak and whiskey to the secondary fermenter. The stout smelled good, as did the oak mix. Now I wait. For a long time.

 2/23/14
Bottled today, going for 2 volumes of CO2, and added a few grams of US-05. The beer tasted quite good, though to my palate there wasn't much oak or whiskey. Finaly gravity was 1.034. So 8.8% ABV. Cool.

 8/12/14
Ugg. Bottles have been way overcarbonated for a while. Not sure if it's infection, brett, or stalled fermentation getting restarted. I have cracked the caps slightly open to let out excessive CO2 a number of times, which was really tedious, but the level of overcarbing seems to be slightly less with each opening. The problem though is that opening the bottle even slightly causing foaming and potentially some beer to come out. I cleaned the outside of the bottles with a bleach solution to reduce mold etc.

I would hate to have dump this batch but if the beer is completely lost I will do it.

Cider #1

My wife and I went apple picking last weekend and brought home a bunch of apples, some apple cider donuts, an apple pie, and a 1 gallon jug of fresh pressed apple cider, which fortunately had been stored at refrigerator temperatures. The orchard store also had some hard cider for sale, but since I like to ferment stuff at home, I figured, why not see what I can do with a $7 jug of fresh, unpasteurized cider.

9/5/13 - Bought cider, and stored it in the fridge.

9/7/13 - Put 1 tablet of campden in the cider to kill any wild yeasts and reduce / kill the bacteria in the cider, let sit in the 65F basement. Measured the gravity of the cider using my new refractomer. I don't have distilled water for use in calibrating the tool, but my tap water measured 0 Brix. The water is pretty light in mineral content, so I think that's about right. The reading was 11.25 Brix or 1.0452 OG. 

9/9/13, 6:45pm - Transferred cider with a funnel into a sanitized 1-gallon jug. Dissolved some yeast nutrient and 2 Tbsp honey in very hot water, and added it to cider. Pitched 1/3 packet of Red Star dry champagne yeast, and swirled the jug around to mix with the yeast into the cider. Placed the jug in the 65F ambient air in my parents' basement. Since I don't have any peptic enzyme, I will just add it later as it can be added after fermentation is complete without causing a problem.

Now I need to wait... a long time. Cider is apparently best after a long, cool fermentation. But at least the process of brewing cider is much easier than all-grain beer brewing.

9/10/13, 6pm
Cider was slowly bubbling. A small krausen had formed on top. The fermentation does not seem to be as vigorous as most of my beers.

11/11/13
Cider is now very clear, at least at 65F. The yeast appears to have all settled to the bottom. I transferred it off of the yeast cake into another jug, leaving most of the yeast behind. A tiny bit remained. It tasted OK, but had kind of a sulfury smell.

12/3/13
Bottled with table sugar, going for about 2.25 volumes. I didn't add any yeast, but stirred up some of the yeast that was at the bottom of the growled. The temps down in the basement are around 60F, which I hope is not too cold for the yeasties to eat the sugar and produce some carbonation over the course of a couple of weeks.

Smoked Porter #3

I've brewed three attempts at smoked porter before. Neither of them came out as smoky as I would like. In fact in both the smoke was a subtle background flavor, if noticeable at all. Why that was I'm not sure, but I would guess that it may have been inadequate percentage of smoked malt, older malt whose smoke flavor had faded, or a combination of both. In any case, I hope that this one will have a more prominent smoky flavor. The recipe is from Brewing Classic Styles with scaling to 3 gallons, substitution of US 2-Row for British malt, an increase in percentage of smoked malt, and Briess cherry-smoked malt instead of beechwood.

Smoked Porter #3

After racking onto a yeast cake.

5.125# US 2-Row
2.5# Cherry smoked malt
12oz Munich
10oz Crystal 40
10oz Crystal 80
8oz Chocolate
4oz Black patent

1oz Kent  Goldings, 5.4%AA, 60 min
.5oz  Willamette, 5%AA, 35min
.5oz Kent Goldings, 5.4%AA, 15min
.5oz Kent Goldings, 5.4% AA,  0min
.5oz Willamette, 5%AA, 0min

Danstar Dry-97 yeast

Mash at 154F for 75 minutes

Water treatment: Brookline, MA water with 1/4 tsp  each of gypsum and calcium chloride

Brewed 9/23/13

Hit my mash temps pretty much dead on. Yay!

Got 1.8 gal first runnings and 3.9 gal total after the sparge.

Preboil OG was  1.058. Too low efficiency. I gotta do something  about this.

About 3 gallons of  beer  when racked  into the fermenter. Yeast cake from the  IPA was still at the bottom of the 5 gal better bottle. It looked pretty nasty but apparently this is a good way to get a strong fermentation started early.

On 9/23/13 at 5:30pm the Better  bottle  was sitting  in 66F water and the airlock was slowly bubbling. A nice krausen had formed but it did not seem to be at high krausen yet.

10/8/13 - Bottled with 2oz brown sugar, going for 2.15 volumes of CO2. Almost exactly 3 gallons were in the bottling bucket. About 12oz were left over in the bottling bucket afterwards. I was under some time pressure this evening and didn't take a hydrometer sample.

Rye IPA #2

After a bit of a break from brewing in August, I'm back with thoughts of the Fall and good beers for that season. On my wife's suggestion, I decided to refine the Rye IPA I brewed a while ago, hoping to make improvements. For this one, it's basically the same recipe but 1) water adjustment as per the suggestions of some people at the home brew club and Gordon Strong's "Brewing Better Beer" and 2) substitution of hops because I didn't have free home-grown Cascade like I did last time.

Rye IPA #2

6.25# Briess 2-Row
2.25# Rye Malt
4oz C20
4oz C40

.875 oz Warrior, 13.7%, 60 min
1/3 oz Cascade, Centenial, Chinook, 7.7%, 9.8%, 15.6%, 5min
1/3 oz Cascade, Centenial, Chinook, 7.7%, 9.8%, 15.6%, 1min
1/3 oz Cascade, Centenial, 7.7%, 9.8%, dry, 7 days
1 1/3 Chinook, 15.6% dry, 7 days

Water: Brookline, MA (soft) with the following added to the brewing water:
1/2 tsp Calcium Chloride
1 tsp Gypsum

Mash at 150F for 80 minutes.

Brewed on 9/8/13
Hit my mash temp pretty much spot on after the mash had been going for 15minutes. I like the speed with which my new Bayou Classic SP-10 burner heats up my water.

Got slightly more than 4 gallons pre-boil.

The boil went OK except that the propane tank ran dry at around 20 minutes left, so I had to finish the boil on the stove. Sucks.

Cooled to 110F using the IC and stirring, then squeezed out the liquid from the hop bag into the beer and placed in 67F ambient water to finish cooling.

Pitched a few hours later when the wort was at 72F and placed the 5 gallon better bottle in a bin of 67F water.

Post-boil OG was 1.054, a bit low.

9/12, 5pm
After 4 days of moderately active fermentation, high krausen seems to have passed. The fermenter is bubbling very slowly but some yeast remains on top of the beer. I moved the carboy out of the water bath.

9/23/13
Racked into a 3 gal Better Bottle and added the dry hops. It is a pain to get the leaf hops into the narrow mouth of the Better Bottle. I think from now on I will use pellet  hops for dry hopping.

10/1/13
Bottled, going for 2.2 vol of CO2. Got 26 bottles. The leaf hops caused all sorts of clogging in the bottling spigot and bottling wand. The bottling did not go smoothly at all as a result, and I had to reach into the beer with sanitized kitchen gloves to clean out the clog. I would not be surprised if the beer gets infected or oxidized because of all this. Next time, I'll try to use only pellet hops for dry-hopping. The hydrometer sample was reading 1.010, as expected a little too low.

3944 Wit Review

A while ago I brewed a Belgian Wit Beer using a scaled-down version of a recipe supplied by the fearless leader of the homebrew club and using WY3944 yeast. A number of other people were supposed to have brewed the same recipe using different yeasts. Sadly, I wasn't able to take good notes of the brew, though I do remember that I had to run and so I pitched when the wort was still a little too hot. We'll see if the beer has indications of an overly aggressive fermentation.

Appearance: Hazy orange / yellow. I opened it at 9:50pm after putting in the fridge at about 5:30pm. So, not a lot of time for the chill haze to reduce. Thin white head that slowly dissipates but leaves a good lacing around the glass as I drink.

Aroma: Estery and yeasty notes dominate but there's a hint of sweetness and perhaps a slight tartness. No hop aroma.

Taste: I get a fruity taste (bananas, peaches, or some type of tropical fruit) with some pilsner grainy sweetness in the background and a little bit of tartness and / or alcohol warming. I don't get the obvious spicy character that some Wit Beers have. I do not detect any hop character.

Mouthfeel: Thinnish body despite that it's not carbonated enough. Leaves a dry aftertaste with a little bit of tartness but not as much spiciness as some wits. Maybe a hint of alcohol warming from a too warm start to fermentation.

Overall:  A light, fruity refreshing Wit beer that's neither as spicy nor as carbonated as some examples. Still, pretty refreshing. I do like it quite a bit.

I'm curious to see both how this one compares to the others at the September meeting of the homebrew club and commercial examples like Allagash White (one of the first craft beers I can remember having). Maybe I'll write up some compare and contrast tasting notes with the Allagash White.

Update: A bunch of people at the homebrew club shared their Wits using the different yeasts. None of them, including this one was considered very good. Overly-phenolic, overly fruity, under carbed, thin body - all of the beers had one or more of these qualities. My particular brew was considered too dry, and lacking in necessary body. Meh!

Raspberry Berliner Weisse

I've never done a fruit beer before, but I have heard that sour beers tend to go well with fruit, as the acidity accentuates the fruit flavor. This is my first fruit beer, made with a sour-worted Berliner fermented with Kölsch yeast and then racked onto about 18 oz of frozen raspberries (thawed and crushed).

Appearance: It's a darkish pink in color, with a little bit of chill haze, but close to translucent at the bottom of the glass. A light pink and surprisingly persistent but thin head covers the top of the beer. Pretty stunning, really, but then again perhaps that's because the color is so unusual for a beer.

Aroma: Raspberry aroma dominates but it doesn't have any of the sweetness of fresh raspberries. It does have an almost sharp acidity in the smell though. Fortunately I do not get the stanky smell that the non-fruited Berliner has.

Taste: Again, a raspberry taste dominates, but it is not as sweet as the fruit. The beer seems to have gotten more acidic, perhaps because the raspberries contribute their own share of acid but then their sugars ferment away. I wouldn't call this beer harshly acidic, but it could use a touch of sweetness or some added complexity to at least slightly balance the sourness.

Mouthfeel: High carbonation, light body and some tingliness on the tough during the aftertaste. Refreshing.

Overall: An assertively sour Berliner with a strong raspberry smell and a moderate raspberry taste. Almost harshly acidic. Stunning in appearance when poured into my antique Belgian beer glasses.

So I think this experiment produced a good first draft. Although the raspberry comes through quite a bit, to me the sourness is a bit one dimensional, particularly in comparison to a professionally brewed (and blended??) sour plum beer I tasted at a homebrewers' meeting last month. (A bottle of it cost $30.) I have to try this again, either with raspberries or some other fruit.

For next time, perhaps sour-wort for less time, or mash higher to get some residual sweetness, or potentially use some brett for added complexity.





 

Belgian Wit Brewday

The homebrew club around here periodically does split batches, in which a bunch of people use the same recipe but with some small variation in the ingredients. That way, differences in the final beer should ideally be attributable to one variable, giving the brewers a way to see how one particular ingredient will change the final beer.

Of course, this doesn't control for process variations, although the instructions provided by the club leader did specify mash temp and a few other variables. Additionally, because of my equipment limitations I had to scale the recipe down to 3 gallons.

This split batch will be a Wit Beer brewed with different types of yeast, keeping the other ingredients the same. I selected WY3944 - Belgian Wit.

Belgian Wit 

5.375# Belgian Pils
11oz Munich 10L
11oz Table Sugar
11oz White Wheat Malt

Hallertau, 4.1%, 80min

WY3944

Expected OG/FG/IBUs /ABV: 1.063 / 1.016 / 22 / 6.1%

Brewed 7/20/13

I didn't take good notes that day since I was busy and had other stuff going on as I was brewing. Lots of things to do in the summer.... But I did note that I was slightly under gravity, and pitched the yeast a little to warm.

Bottled on 8/14, going for 2.7 volumes of CO2. Got a small amount left in the bottling bucket. It tasted a bit "green", with a lot of yeast still in suspension.

I hope it turns out like Allagash White. Possible, though perhaps not probable.

Berliner Weisse 2 Tasting

On July 4 I brewed a sour-worted Berliner Weisse, which I had allowed to sour four about 72 hours. I was aiming for a more sour beer than I had last time I used this technique,

Appearance: Golden hazy yellow, with a white head that quickly dissipates.

Aroma: Unfortunately I get a slightly off "trashy" smell from it, with a little bit of lemony tartness mixed in. I hope this smell goes away after a while as it did with my last use of this technique.

Taste: I get a pretty "clean" sourness throughout, especially in the aftertaste. It has a lemony quality, but not mouth puckering like it would be to bite on a lemon. Maybe a little bit of pilsner grain taste or very slight sweetnes in there, but the sour dominates.

Mouthfeel: Pretty thin due to the low gravity. I don't think it is quite as effervescent as my last one, so it doesn't have the enhanced mouthfeel that can come from high carbonation in a low gravity beer.

Overall: A light, refreshing, and moderately sour Berliner Weiss that probably should be more sour and more highly carbonated. Overall, I don't think it's much different than my last try at this style using the same sour-wort technique. Perhaps next time I'll sour longer, or maybe try the technique of adding lacto to the fermentation.


Other: I recently went with my with to Northern Germany, where her family lives, and took along a bottle of this beer. Her family generally do not drink Berliner Weiss, but they said it was pretty sour, and generally OK. However, they emphasized that the style is pretty much always consumed with sweet Woodruff or Raspberry syrups, in a shallow challice, stirred up a bit to get a nice thick head, and drunk through a straw. (Beer through a straw?!)

King Titus Clone Attempt Tasting

A few weeks ago I brewed a Robust Porter, attempting to duplicate the King Titus from Maine Beer Company. The clone competition is on August 2, and although I likely won't be able to go, I hope to get some compare and contrast notes about my clone attempt.

I did a side by side tasting last weekend with my wife and a few friends, and I wasn't about to be all asocial by writing up the comparison on the blog as we were all tasting it.

Appearance: Dark brown if not black body, with a dark brown head that unfortunately does not stick around as long as I'd like, but leaves OK lacing on the side of the glass as I drink it. Nearly opaque.

Aroma: I get a fairly coffee / chocolatey / roasty aroma, with a good bit of resiny hop smell. The roast character is more prominent but not by a whole lot.

Taste: I get a roasty taste but also a decent bit of bitterness mixed in there. It has a moderate amount of chocolate and coffee flavors. The roastiness really comes through during the aftertaste. A bit of sweetness beneath the roast and hop characters, but still on the dry side to my palate.

Mouthfeel: Moderate to low carbonation, with a sort of thick or chewy character, both I think from the resinous hops and some slight sweetness in the body.

Overall: A roasty, chocolately robust porter with some resiny American hop aroma and bitterness. Moderate to low carbonation, with a thick body. I like it, though it tastes to my palate a little too similar to the American Stout I brewed a while ago that ended up tasting like a "Black IPA" or whatever you want to call it.

Comparison to the real King Titus: As I recall, the real KT had a way more dominant chocolate character, more sweetness, a chewier body and a little bit more carbonation. The hops in the real KT were much more subdued that in mine, despite that the brewer's description of KT says that it has a plentiful amount of bold American hops. Whatever. Is that an accurate description of the real KT? If so I must never have had fresh enough KT that the hop character was well preserved. In any case, I'm very curious to see what kind of feedback I get about this beer during the clone comp.

For next time: Reduce hop presence, increase chocolate malts, and perhaps use more oats to give a fuller body, even while slightly increase carbonation level.

Kölsch Tasting

About a month ago I brewed a Kölsch, intending to have a nice, easy drinking but tasty summer beer. I think I achieved that goal, thanks to a controlled fermentation temperature, enough time for the relatively non-flocculent Kölsch yeast to settle, and use of finings.

Appearance: Golden yellow, with a large white head that stay around a while. Slight chill haze and maybe a tiny bit of yeast, but still relatively clear for my beers.

Aroma: Soft, slightly bready nose, with the pilsner malt coming through. I don't really get any of the fruity quality that some of examples of the style supposedly have.

Taste: Again the grainy quality of the pilsner malt comes through. It's pretty dry, but has a slightly sweetness and so it's not as crisp as a Pilsner beer. The hop presence is low but it has some of the floral or earthy quality of German hops. The taste is subtle, good for a "lawnmower ale."

Body: Moderate to high carbonation, and light mouthfeel. The aftertaste is grainy, slightly sweet, and with a crispy hop character.

Overall:  A light, subtly flavorful beer with moderate alcohol, moderate-high carbonation, and a crisp grainy quality, but not as crisp or dry as a Pilsner beer. I think it is a better summer beer that the Ordinary Bitter I brewed a while ago. Overall I like it quite a lot. Don't think I would change anything. A German friend of mine, for what it's worth, said that he would not be surprised to have a beer like this in Cologne. Yay!

Berlin Weiss 2.0 Brew Day

Last year I made a Berliner Weiss by souring the entire volume of wort. I let the wort sit for 20  hours, and it didn't quite get as sharply sour as I was hoping. For this brew I used pretty much the same recipe except that I plan to sour for about three days, starting the souring process on a Monday evening and ending it on a Thursday afternoon. I think also that I'd like to add raspberries to 1 gallon of it. I've heard that the sourness goes well with many fruit. Finally, I don't have US-05 right now so I'll use some of the left over Kolsch yeast I washed a few days ago.

Berliner Weiss 2.0
2.625# German Pilsner Malt
1.5# White Wheat
.25oz American Perle, 3.5% AA, 15 minutes

15 minute boil.

Kolsch yeast. 

Expected OG/FG/IBUs/ABV: 1.031 / 1.008 / 3 / 3.1%

7/1/13
Mashed at 149F for 2 hours, sparged as usual then let wort cool to 118F. in my MLT. "Pitched" a handful of grain and a little bit of steel cut oats at around 10PM. Covered the surface with sanitized aluminum foil and pressed the air bubbles out. Place MLT is the garage, where ambient temps are around 75F.

7/2, 7/3
Removed some wort, boiled for a few minutes and added back in to the MLT in order to keep the temps at around  100F. The wort had a kind of unpleasant smell, like trash or something. But that's normal.

7/4
At 4pm, boiled the wort for 15 minutes, cooled to around 65F, and pitched the washed Kolsch yeast. No starter since this is such a low ABV beer, although I've heard the acidity can inhibit full fermentation to the target FG. So total souring time of around 70 hours. I had a little bit of wort left in the boil kettle. It had a sour aftertaste, but in kind of a weird way. The unfermented wort, in my experience, rarely tastes like the finished beer. 

7/8
The beer is still slowly bubbling, ambient temps at 67F. The yeast had not settled at all, and a thick yeasty krausen is still sitting on top of the beer. Fermentation was never so active as to push any yeast out of the airlock, despite that the Better Bottle only has about 1/2 gallon of head space left.

7/23
Bottled 2 gallons, going for 2.6 volumes of CO2. Put the remainder (about 0.8 gallon) into a 1-gallon jug with 20oz of frozen raspberries that I thawed and squished. By the next day it was slowly bubbling but I couldn't see many bubbles rising through the beer. Many of the white raspberry seeds were floating on top of the beer, but a few occasionally sank.

The regular version was at 1.005 FG, with a definite sourness, and like my last Berliner, a slight trashy smell. I hope that part will go away. 

Ordinary Bitter Tasting

When brewing a bitter a few weeks ago, I had in mind a flavorful but low-alcohol beer that would drink well in hot weather. Since it's now about 80F in my un-AC'ed place, it seems logical to see how well the bitter goes down when summer heat is in full swing.

Appearance: Deep copper in color. Moderate chill haze, and a small head despite a fairly aggressive pour. No lacing.

Aroma: I get some caramel, bready notes, with perhaps a tiny bit of earthy English hop aroma. A hint of sweetness. The aroma improves as it warms to the proper serving temperature of around 55F.

Flavor: I would say that it has a grainy, earthy maltiness, with a touch of bitterness at the end. Moderate to low sweetness. It has kind of a bread like character. Quite pleasant in my view.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation, and despite its low gravity the beer does not have a thin or watery mouthfeel. In fact to me the body seems moderate. I think its the slight sweetness combined with the bready quality that gives it body. Perhaps the body is not light enough to be thirst-quenching, but hey, it's beer, not Gatorade.

Overall: A flavorful but low alcohol English session beer with a malty, slightly sweet and bread like character. Not much hop presence. I would say that it goes reasonably well in the summer but would be a good session beer at any time of the year. Since it's not spritzy and dry it may not be as refreshing as a Hefeweissen or Pils in the summer.

 I don't think I would change anything besides of course trying to reduce the chill haze.

King Titus Clone Attempt

I have decided to enter my homebrew clubs clone competition, for which I will be attempting to clone King Titus, a robust porter from Maine Beer Company. At some point in early August the club will go over to the brewery, where the pros at Maine Beer will judge how close the clone attempts come to the real thing. The recipe from the brewery is this:

Color – Dark Chocolate
ABV – 7.5%
O.G. – 1.075
Malt – American 2-Row, Caramel 40L, Caramel 80L, Munich 10L, Chocolate, Roasted Wheat, Flaked Oats
Hops – Centennial, Columbus

The LHBS didn't have roast wheat, so I made a substitution, and I wanted to use some of the Warrior hops, so again I made a substitution. Even if it doesn't turn out like the commercial beer, I hope to get a nice chocolatey porter out of it.

King Titus Clone Attempt
6.250# US 2-Row
1# Munich 10L
1# Flaked Oats
8oz US Crystal 40
8oz Chocolate Malt
6oz US Crystal 80
3oz Chocolate Wheat
3oz Roast Barley

Mash at 152F, 75minutes

5/8oz Warrior, 13.7% AA, 60min
1/4oz Columbus, 15.2% AA, 15min
1/4oz Columbus, 15.2% AA, 5min

US-05

 Expected FG/OG/IBUs/ABV: 1.070, 1.017, 46, 6.8%

Brew Day 6/23/13
Prepped a starter from some washed yeast the day before the brewday. By the time I started heating the strike water the starter was slowly fermenting.

Actual mash temp was 152F.

A few minutes before the boil started.

Got 1.8 gallons of first runnings. Got about 4.2 gallons of pre-boil wort. The pre-boil OG was 1.052. If I get the post-boil volume down to 3.12 gal. I should be at the right gravity.

Around 3.2 gallons went into the fermenter. I pitched the decanted starter when the wort was around 70F. The OG was 1.064, a little low. Arg!

6/24/13 By 5:30pm, the beer was actively fermenting while the carboy was sitting in a water bath at 64F.

6/25/13, 6pm. Still bubbling but at a fairly slow pace. Ambient temps remain at 64F.

7/11/13. Bottled, aiming for 2.2 volumes of CO2. Got 34 x 12oz bottles. Did not have enough left in the bottling bucket to take a hydrometer sample.