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.