Celebration Clone Review

This beer was brewed so that the brew club I'm it could have a clone competition with another brew club in the region. The competition was supposed to have been this last weekend but was delayed to due a series of snowstorms that set a record for most snow in shortest time, so this review was written without being biased by the results of the competition.

Appearance: Hazy dark orange. Moderate head that sticks to the side of the glass but dissipates fairly quickly, leaving a thin coating of bubbles over the surface of the beer.


Aroma: Pretty decent hop aroma. Classic aroma of Cascade and Centennial combination, similar to beers I've made before with those two hops. Fruity, peachy, mango-y. Not much dankness or piney quality in the aroma. I don't detect a malt backbone since it's overshadowed by the hops.

Taste: Follows the hop smell but adds a moderate bitterness at the finish, with some dankness in the flavor. Malty sweetness is there too but moderate. Good hop flavor.

Mouthfeel: Full mouthfeel but with moderate-low carbonation. Aftertaste is bitter but not overpoweringly so. Nice malty sweetness balances the bitterness pretty well.

Overall: I'm happy with both the hop aroma and flavor. This is a very pleasant IPA that has great Cascade / Centennial hoppiness. Bitterness is appropriate for the style but on the low to moderate range. It's not a bone-dry West-coast IPA but veers towards and East-Coast IPA, as was intended. Usually the hop aroma and flavor of my beers deteriorates pretty quickly, but for this one I may put them all in my beer / lager fridge, which currently I'm not using for any fermenting or lagering beers.

Compare and Contrast: As I recall the Celebration, my homebrew is more aromatic, more bitter, and less sweet. The color is nearly correct though mine is cloudy, while the Celebration is clear. Unfortunately I could not find any Celebration Ale at the local beer stores, since it's a seasonal brew that presumably won't be available until the end of 2015.

Review of Meads

Normally, beer is my fermented beverage of choice. But variety is good. So, I made a mead about a year ago, and let it age for some time, splitting it up into a "traditional" batch and a "fruit" batch. Since it was my first attempt at this beverage and I wanted to keep my costs down, I used mainly ingredients from Costco, with the expectation of making a drinkable but not great product. Here are my tasting notes, although I've been consuming this product slowly since maybe June 2014.

Traditional Mead
Appearance: Translucent light yellow. Crystal clear.

Aroma: White wine like. Floral, sweet, not completely like honey. Prominent but not intense. Some alcohol in the nose.

Taste: Initial taste is like the nose: sweet, floral, white wine. The honey comes in later, while definitely there it lacks the very strong taste of pure honey. Alcohol notes in the finish but fortunately it doesn't have a nasty alcohol burn.

Mouthfeel: Body is medium to medium full, smooth. Zero carbonation. Sweetness adds to perception of body.

Overall: A pretty wine-like mead, with subdued honey characteristics and medium-low sweetness. Pleasant, but I wish it had more of a distinct



Fruit Mead
Appearance: Crystal clear red, almost purple color.

Aroma: Huge sweet fruit aroma. Mainly raspberries but perhaps some darker fruits like blackberries. Honey aroma is overpowered by the fruit.

Taste: Fruity, but less so than the nose. I get a definite tannic quality from the skins of the fruits, which helps to give the mead a dry red-wine like character. Sweetness is lower than in the traditional mead. Sadly I really don't get much if any honey character. Alcohol is muted by the strong taste of the fruit and tannins.

Mouthfeel: Medium to full. Tannins give it some body. Zero carbonation. Leaves a tannic-dry aftertaste.

Overall: Pleasant, wine-like mead with an interesting mix of fruit and tannic. Lacks significant honey taste or aroma.

Overall
Next time I make mead, I think I will use better quality honey and yeast specifically made for mead. These drinks are tasty but are too wine like in my view.

King Titus Clone Re-Brew

This is a rebrew of my King Titus clone attempt, but with a couple of small changes.

King Titus Clone Attempt #2
6.250# US 2-Row
1# Munich 10L
1# Flaked Oats
8oz US Crystal 40
8oz Chocolate Malt
8oz US Crystal 80
3oz Light Chocolate Malt
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
1/4oz Columbus, 15.2% AA, 1 min

US-05

 Expected FG/OG/IBUs/ABV: 1.076, 1.017, 46, 7%

2/6/15
Made a started w/ washed US-05. Didn't get much activity from the starter but by the time I pitched into the wort it was picking up a bit. 


Brew Day 2/8/15
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.


Got about 4.5 gallons pre-boil at 1.066 gravity. Boiled for 95 minutes.

Cooling went slowly because my stupid submersible pump thought there was an electrical fault, so I used the ice-bath method.

Oxygenated with my new oxygenation wand. Cool!

Pitched when the wort was at 65F at around 3:30pm.

2/9/15, 1pm. No signs of activity yet. 63F ambient.

Schwarzbier Review

Look Ma, I finally brewed a lager!! Seriously, I did. It was about two months ago, and my creation is ready to drink. Let's see how it turned out.

Appearance: Deep brown. Transparent and very clear when held up to the light. Creamy and persistent off white head.

Aroma: Sweet, bready smell, with notes of dark fruit and slight roastiness. Molasses maybe. Hop aroma is low to none, which I find somewhat surprising given the volume of hops late in the boil. Fortunately I don't get diacetyl, sulfur, or weird esters.

Taste: Like the nose. Malty, bready, noticeably sweeter that many American beers which lean more toward the bitter side. Roasted taste is there but subtle. Dark fruit, caramel, molasses. I do get some floral hop bitterness at the end though.

Mouthfeel: Kind of creamy. Moderate carbonation.

Overall: I think its not bad for my first attempt at a lager. I'd like to get some expert opinion on it however, and directly compare it to a commercial example of the style such as Kostrizer. But it does seem to taste similar to the dark lagers I tasted while in Germany.

Celebration Ale Clone Attempt

I've was very busy from November through most of December 2014, although not as busy as my lack of postings would suggest. In fact in November I did two group brews - a Brett Trois IPA and a Coffee Milk stout, neither of which I will discuss on this blog.

I finally brewed again last Saturday. It's an attempt to brew Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, which to me had a surprisingly malty (for an IPA) taste, without being strongly bitter. Still nice and hoppy with a good hop aroma. I did get some information about the recipe from SN by way of the local brew club.

Celebration Clone Attempt
 3 gallons

3.5# US 2-Row
3.5# Maris Otter
6oz Crstal 60
4oz Crystal 40

Gypsum and CaCl in water at 2:1 ratio

Mash at 154F

.45oz Centennial, 10.5%, 60min
.45oz Chinook, 13%, 60min
1oz Centennial, 10.5%, 10min
1oz Cascade, 6%, 5min
1oz Centennial, 10.5%, 1min
1oz Cascade, 6%, 1min
1oz Centennial, 10.5%, Dry, 14 days
1oz Cascade, 6%, Dry, 14 days
0.5oz Chinook, 13%, 14 days

US-05 Yeast

Expected OG/FG/IBU/ABV: 1.067 / 1.015 / 6.6%

Brewed 1/11/15

Brewing went pretty well, except that my normal scale for weighing hops didn't seem to work, so I had to use the less accurate kitchen scale.

Pre-boil gravity of 15.5B, or 1.0633, which will put the post-boil OG somewhere near 1.075 - a bit too high.

Cooled to 60F, using ice-cold (literally) water through my immersion chiller, then pitched rehydrated dry yeast, and placed the carboy in 56F ambient air.

No visible fermentation the next day at 6pm. Moved the carboy to 62F ambient air.

1/13/15 - Fermentation is actively progressing. 

1/18/15 - Fermentation mostly complete.Added whole-leaf dry hops directly into the primary fermenter. Ambient temp was ~65F.

Schwarzbier Brewday

I finally got a chest freezer for making lagers and generally controlling the temp of my beers. For an automatic thermostat, I got an STC-1000 which is awesome enough as it is, but a guy in the local homebrew club flashed it with the STC-1000+ ROM. That free upgrade allows you to program the STC-1000 plus with up to 9 fermentation profiles, which can each have their own series of temperature points and associated durations. Apparently one would normally have to pay $200+ for a commercially produced controller with those features.

In any case, for my first lager I decided to brew a 5-gallon batch of Schwarzbier following the recipe of p. 81 of Brewing Classic Styles.

German Schwarzbier
5 gallons
9# German Pils
1# German Munich
11oz Carafa Special II

Hallertau, 1.65oz, 4.0%, 60min
Hallertau, 0.5oz, 4.0%, 60min
Hallertau, 0.5oz, 4.0%, 60min (ended up adding .85 oz at flameout because I didn't want any leftover Hallertau hops).

Mash at 151F, boil 90 mins.

WLP830 - German Lager

Made a large yeast starter on 11/5/14.

Brewed 11/8/14 at a friends house. Didn't really check the OG etc.... but I believe I did get the right volume.

When the boiled wort was chilled to around 100F, I siphoned to a 6-gallon carboy and placed in the 45F fridge.

The next morning, the fridge and beer were at 55F. Pitched the whole starter, shook the carboy to aerate a little bit, then let it ferment.

Fermentation profile programmed into the SCT-1000+ is 2 weeks at 50F, ramp to 60F over 1 day, hold at 60F 2 days, ramp down to 50, hold for a day, then ramp to 35F and hold there.

By the afternoon of 11/11, there was a nice krausen and bubbling, By 11/16 it seemed to be at high krausen. Still bubbling and a bit of krausen on 11/19.

It doesn't smell like ale fermentation.... a little harsh. But we'll see how it ends up.

Transferred to secondary on 12/4/14, after the beer had entered the lagering period at 35F.

Bottled on 1/3/15, using table sugar as a priming solution. I will wait a bit longer before popping the first bottle, since I hear lager yeast takes longer to carbonate.



 

Brett IPA #2 Review

So I finally brewed the same beer twice. Well, almost. This recipe had only one difference from the previous version, which was the addition of the Acid Malt. But the process was slightly different too, since I let the primary fermentation go for two weeks instead of one before adding the dry hops. Let's see if it makes a substantial different in the results…..


Appearance: Golden-orange, hazy with Brett yeast. Solid white head that leaves good lacing around the glass.

Aroma: Bright with hops. Fruity like mangoes or so, but with a dank side too.

Taste: Similar to the aroma: fruity, tropical juicy, but with a solid bitterness. To me it tastes a little more bitter than the last one.

Mouthfeel: Carbonation is on the higher end of moderate. Definitely not as highly carbed as my first Brett IPA. The body is not spritzy but still light.

Overall:Very good. My brother said it tasted like a commercial-quality IPA. I'm not sure if the acid malt made any difference compared to previous batch, but I definitely do detect the lower carbonation in this one. I think for next time a carbonation level around 2.5 would be better, as would a slight reduction in the IBUs. Not sure the acid malt added anything that I can detect.

I think I prefer the previous batch, which I believe benefitted from the lighter body and the slightly lower bitterness.