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.