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.