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.