Saison with Citrus

A couple events conspired to bring about this breath of sunnier times.  First, while the White Labs Platinum Saison II I used for the Petit Hiver fit that beer well, I really missed the more expressive character of the Wyeast French Saison yeast I’d originally wanted to propagate for a batch of Belgian dark strong ale in the new year.  Second, our local Whole Foods put 5-pound bags of California mandarin oranges on sale at the beginning of December.  It was time to bring a little bit of summer to the Utah winter.

I put together a simple low-gravity grist–base malt, white wheat, a little light crystal for sweetness–threw in an ounce of citrusy Amarillos, and ramped up the fermentation temperatures to push the esters on the yeast.  While this was in primary, there was another sale, this time on satsumas, so my citrus addition to secondary doubled.  I skinned and froze the citrus; I also zested the first bag of fruit, but by the time it came to

transfer to secondary it had started smelling funky, so I tossed it.  All told, I had six and a half pounds of citrus flesh go into secondary with the base beer, which had fermented pretty far down and was nice and estery.

Secondary has been cool to preserve as much of the citrus aromatics as possible.  Even better, I took this opportunity to properly wash yeast for the first time, with great success; I have a thick slurry of 3711 ready to tear through that coming BDSA sometime next month.  In the meantime, we’ll have an light summery beer to break up the line of dark beers and help us forget about the skiing weather outside for a while.

Sunshine Saison - saison de table with mandarins & satsumas

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.043
Projected SRM: 4.2
Projected IBU: 21.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 90%

Grains
76.9% - 5 lb 2-row
15.4% - 1 lb White wheat
7.7% - 8 oz C 20

Hops
.5 oz Amarillo (9.3%) (FWH)
.7 oz Amarillo (15 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY3711 French Saison (no starter)

Extras

6.5 lb mandarins & satsumas, crushed & frozen (secondary)
23 mandarins worth of zest (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
6 qts RO water
1 g Epsom salt

Brewday: 27 November 2011
Mash: 10 qts @ 148F for 75 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 8.2P (1.033)
Sat for about 12 hours before the boil - no souring occurred

Started in swamp cooler at ~68F ambient; ramped up to 80F after 3 days

Secondary: 11 December 2011
SG: 1.006
Adjusted OG (w/ citrus): 1.048
Zest (sprayed with Star San, stored in tupperware container in fridge) smelled gamey, so skipped it this time.  Stick to fresh!

Bottled: 21 January 2012
FG: 1.003
ABV: 5.9%
Bottled with 4.2 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast

Initial tasting: Strikes me as overly puckering.  DeAunn likes the bready quality it has in the aftertaste.

Blueberry Stout

As it is for many homebrewers, my first-ever extract batch was an American pale ale kit, whcih made good sense in the Honolulu climate.  For the second batch, though, I went for something more winter themed: a Murphy’s Irish Stout clone with 5 pounds of frozen blueberries added at flameout.  Far from a typical dry stout, it ended up big and winey, and was definitely the most popular of my early batches.  In late 2009, I put together an all-grain batch in the same mold; again, it went over well, especially with DeAunn.  I thought I’d taken a hiatus from stouts and porters for now, but when Lisa, a new school friend of ours, found out about these past beers and volunteered to buy the blueberries for a new batch, I certainly wasn’t going to say no.

The base beer was originally going to be a moderate-gravity milk stout with lactose and medium-dark crystal for residual sweetness, and a pound of roasted barley and 4 ounces each of American and British chocolate malts for roast complexity.  I unwittingly measured out 8 ounces each of the chocolates into a bag together at the LHBS; with nothing else to do about it, I added a few more pounds of base malt to move this one into the foreign export range.  I’d already bought a smack pack of London Ale III–my first time using this strain, and looking for its reported fruitiness to accentuate the blueberry addition to come–but with a much higher-gravity wort than originally expected and no time to do a starter, I added a couple tablespoons of Nottingham slurry.

After primary and a couple weeks sitting warm, Lisa brought over 10 pounds of frozen blueberries.  There was some stress with the spigot on the secondary fermenter I planned to use not sealing properly, so I cleaned out and sanitized my 6-gallon carboy I’d used for primary, put it all back in there, and waited for the inevitable blowoff.  I kept it cool so the blueberries’ fermentation wouldn’t get too rocking; even so, with the carboy so full there was a bit flooding the airlock after a few days.  I punched down the swelling blueberries and replaced the airlock with aluminum foil; the blueberries were still fermenting away and pushing out a bit of fluid through the carboy opening by the time we left for the midwest for the holidays, but the fermentation seemed to be slow and steady instead of violent, which should be aided by the low thermostat setting while we’re gone.

I won’t be back to bottle this beast for almost a month.  I fully expect the blueberries to ferment out completely and for the skins to impart a tannic, winey quality as had happened in the previous batches; with a high finishing gravity going into secondary, though, I hope there'll be plenty of residual sweetness to balance it.  This should be an enjoyable way to ride out the early dark months of 2012.

Blueberry Stout Strikes Back - Base

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.077
Projected SRM: 44.6
Projected IBU: 19.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 95%

Grains/Fermentables
70.6% - 9 lb 2-row
7.8% - 1 lb US roasted barley
6.0% - 12 oz C 80
3.9% - 8 oz US chocolate
3.9% - 8 oz UK chocolate
7.8% - 1 lb Lactose (0 min)

Hops
1 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY1318 London Ale III (no starter)
2 tbsp Nottingham (slurry)

Extras
10 lb Frozen blueberries (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
6 qts RO water

Brewday: 26 November 2011
Mash: 15 qts @ 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o lactose): 13.3P (1.054)

Fermented in swamp cooler at 63F ambient

2 December 2011: Krauesen has fallen; out of swamp cooler and into main area (65-70F ambient) to clean up

Secondary: 16 December 2011
SG: 1.025
OG (adjusted w/ estimated blueberry contribution): 1.085
Kept in 50F ambient room

Bottled: 5 February 2012
FG: 1.017
ABV: 8.9%
Bottled with 4 oz table sugar.

Tasting: A hit.  Vinous character from the blueberries is most prominent aspect, dominating even over all that roasted grain.  This one will keep coming back.

The week in brew

I have a couple new beers in the fermenters that I still need to write up, but thought I’d switch up the format a bit and cover some of my other homebrew-related stuff going on in the past few days here.

Thursday I cooked up a couple batches of chili (one with meat for me, the other vegetarian for DeAunn) based on Sean Paxton’s recipe, which first rocked my world in the spring. I kept it pretty much the same, though I simplified the meat bill; the vegetarian version got black beans and diced red potatoes in place of the meat. My batch got a bottle of Old Rasputin (always a winner) while DeAunn’s employed a local option: Epic Brewing’s Smoked Porter. The smoke phenolics went well with the chipotle pepper I added to the vegetarian chili. Both batches turned out exceptionally, and we still have a little of each left to enjoy. We complemented them with some sharp cheddar and whole wheat crackers.

Thursday night, I finally managed to bottle my Holiday 2011 and chocolate-mint-oatmeal stout. The Holiday was pretty easy; the sample seemed bland, but as the rye 70/- started out the same way and really came into its own in the bottle, I’m not too worried. The stout was a bit messier; the cocoa powder had formed a rocky doppelganger krauesen in secondary, which made my original plan to whirlpool it all to the middle of the fermenter less of a great idea. Even after giving it some time to settle before racking, the beer ran off looking like really dark chocolate milk. I added vanilla extract and all of my mint tincture, but the mint wasn’t really coming across, so on a whim I added some of the mint extract we had in the cupboard. It wasn’t until after I added it that I read the label: it’s an alcohol-free extract that includes sunflower oil, which caused it to bead up in the bottling bucket. I kept stirring as I bottled to hopefully keep it in solution long enough for it to get into the bottles, but at least the mint aroma was there. The bottles have already formed chunky cocoa krauesens, and we’ll just have to see if they develop any head at all with the oil in there. I’m also still trying to get the mint aroma out of my bottling bucket and plastic bottling pieces.

After some excitement Friday morning involving the dog, a chocolate cookie, an emergency vet visit, and some induced vomiting, I made it down to the LHBS to pick up the packet of Wyeast Brett L I special ordered for an upcoming batch, along with grains for said batch and an extra fermenting bucket. Then late Friday night, DeAunn and I cracked open the reserve bottle of my last blueberry stout, now more than two years old, with a friend. This friend has volunteered to buy the blueberries for a new batch, so the time was right for sharing. It’s mellowed a lot, and has traded much of its winey quality for more blueberry flavour, a pleasant surprise.

The only action Saturday saw was the prepping of two starters. The traditional one of Denny’s Favorite 50 (WY1450) went on the stirplate, and looks to have already finished up. The other was a lacto starter made of table sugar and a bit of base malt kept warm with an aquarium heater; that one will keep going pretty much right up until pitching time to grow as much as possible.

Sunday morning I put the new bucket to work as a secondary for a citrus saison; more on that coming soon. Six and a half pounds of frozen mandarins and satsumas floating in five gallons of beer looks pretty cool, in my humble opinion, especially with the temperatures outside right now. I also washed the yeast cake for a Belgian dark strong in the new year. Now I’m just waiting on those blueberries to arrive so I can rack the stout onto them and leave it until the middle of next month when I get back from Chicago.

Next on the brew docket is a pretty simple pale ale and an attempt at a low-gravity “quick” sour/funky beer. Don’t know yet if there’ll be time to get one or both done before leaving town for the holiday, but it sure would be nice to do so. Writeups on the beers in primary coming soon, too.

Winter Spiced 90/-

While I often brew bigger, richer beers at the end of the calendar year and have been known to gift a few bottles around Christmas, I’ve never done a “holiday beer”; the few commercial winter warmers I’ve had, often heavily spiced, have usually underwhelmed me.  Given the approaching season and my new attitude on using spices, though, I thought it might be time to give it a shot.

My aim was for something rich and malty without becoming as heavy as an old ale or barleywine, with spices reminiscent of the flavours of the season.  I planned a Scottish 80/-, but between good extraction and boiling down the first runnings, my efficiency jumped enough to put this in the 90/- range (in homebrew terms, of course).  To push the malt-forward nature of this beer, nearly a third of the grist was Vienna, with another fifteen percent being crystal malts.  The aroma in the kitchen on brewday was incredible; the wort smelled like milk chocolate.  After primary, the gravity sat at a respectably medium-bodied 1.016.

Additions to the secondary included ground nutmeg and a cinnamon stick, along with some small oak pieces from the stave I had sitting in my Flanders red that didn’t turn out.  Brought to about a medium toast in the oven, the pieces went with the spices into a container of Jim Beam for better than a month.  This should be a treat to quaff in a bad Christmas sweater this holiday.

Holiday 2011

Batch size: 5.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.058
Projected SRM: 14.0
Projected IBU: 21.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 90%

Grains
52.6% - 5 lb 2-row
31.6% - 3 lb Vienna
10.5% - 1 lb C20
5.3% - 8 oz Special B

Hops
1 oz EKG (5.8%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY1728 Scottish ale (no starter)

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)
1 oz Oak cubes, medium-dark toast, bourbon soaked (secondary)
1 Cinnamon stick, bourbon soaked (secondary)
1/8 tsp Ground nutmeg, bourbon soaked (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
8 qts RO water
1 g Epsom salt
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 29 October 2011
Mash: 156F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o 1st runnings): 8P (1.032)

First runnings smell (and taste) really chocolatey!

Boiled down first runnings to a thick syrup; added back at end of boil

Fermented in the swamp cooler at 60F ambient

Secondary: 11 November 2011
FG: 1.016
ABV: 5.5%

Bottled: 8 December 2011
Pretty thin taste; cinnamon present as general spiciness
Bottled with 3.6 oz table sugar

Tasting: Unbalanced and underwhelming, unfortunately.  I've learned "empirically" that there's a good reason spiced beers are usually higher in alcohol: that extra ethanol (in addition to residual sugars, I'd imagine) balance the contributions of the spices.  In this beer, the bourbon character became cloying.  In addition, the bottles seemed to foam like nobody's business; no hint of infection, just foam for days.

Chocolate Mint Oatmeal Stout

Ah, back to the colder end of the year.  The leaves have finally started to come down off the trees en masse, and the mountains look incredible covered in snow.  Of course, my personal preference is for shorts weather.  But the chill does bring a marked change to the brewing schedule; it’s now entirely appropriate to make some of my favourite types of beer.  Those of the dark, malty, roasty, full-bodied variety.  And since I’ve started to more fully explore spices in my beer, I might as well bring along some of them for the season.  Ted Danyluk's Mint stout struck me as a tasty possibility when I read about it a couple years ago, and pretty much every year I try to add chocolate to at least one beer.  I felt a plan coming together.

For the base beer, I wanted a smooth, mouth-filling, not-too-roasty oatmeal stout.  I went easy on the heavily roasted grains and included some dark crystal to hopefully impart a little bit of  lasting sweetness and dark fruit character.  Since I’m looking to add mint to this batch, I went with Northdown hops, which reputedly have a woody, minty flavour; that probably won’t come through very much from the bittering addition, but they did give a solid, moderate bitterness.  I went with a significant portion of flaked oats to add a lot of slickness and mouthfeel.  For extra fun, I lightly toasted half of them; much like when I did the same thing with rye malt, the oats in the oven made the house smell incredible.

Brewday started off with a cereal mash for the oats, and moved forward in uncomplicated fashion from there.  Our new friends Craig and Cait came over for a bit while I ran around like an idiot trying to remember what needed to happen next for the brew (which anyone who’s brewed with me can attest is par for the course); the

four of us have a lot of fun hanging out, even when I’m making myself manic on a brewday.  When transferring to secondary, I really liked the muted roastiness the beer had.  It finished drier than I’d hoped, though I don’t think it’s a terribly big issue; if that’s my goal, though, perhaps next time I’ll wisely use a lower attenuating yeast.

Chocolate in beer, particularly stout, I’ve done before.  It’s never quite turned out how I wanted, though; I’ve ended up with much more roast and coffee than the cocoa flavour I wanted.  I’ve added cocoa powder to the boil and cacao nibs (unroasted, I believe, which may have been part of the problem there) to secondary; this time I’m going with cocoa powder, made into a paste with hot water and added to secondary.  Upon tasting the cocoa paste that wouldn’t get off the spoon at transfer time, I may add some vanilla extract at bottling to balance the roast.  Next time I may just try a high-quality commercial chocolate extract; if it works for Rogue, it’ll probably be all right for me.

Adding mint...that’s uncharted territory for me.  From my incredibly exhaustive research, it sounded like it could get overpowering quickly, so instead of adding anything to the boil or secondary, I made a tincture of fresh spearmint leaves (which I crushed by hand to encourage extraction) and dried peppermint that I’ll add to taste at bottling.  The concoction looks kind of hideous in the container, as the leaves are extremely wilted; the aroma, though is very intense, kind of like putting an entire pack of spearmint gum in your mouth.  I’m curious to see how this flavour and aroma will play with the roast.  I can taste the holidays already.

CMO Stout - chocolate, mint & oatmeal

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.057
Projected SRM: 26.1
Projected IBU: 25.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 78%

Grains
58.5% - 6 lb 2-row
29.3% - 3 lb Flaked oats, 1.5 lb lightly toasted
4.9% - 8 oz C120
4.9% - 8 oz Pale chocolate
2.4% - 4 oz Roasted barley

Hops
1 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
WLP 007 Dry English Ale (slurry)

Extras
10 oz Ghirardelli cocoa powder paste (w/ hot water) (secondary)
Vanilla extract, to taste (bottling)
2/3 oz Fresh spearmint leaves, vodka soaked (bottling, to taste)
3 g Dried peppermint leaf, vodka soaked (bottling, to taste)

Water additions (mash)
7 qts RO water

Brewday: 28 October 2011
Cereal mash: 1 lb 2-row with oats @ 135F for 15 minutes; boil for 20 minutes
Mash-in: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons

Fermented in swamp cooler at 60F once visible fermentation started; took a few days before the slurry took off

Secondary: 11 November 2011
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.9%

Tasting: The cocoa powder and alcohol-free peppermint extract destroyed this batch; the beer is chunky and cloudy, and it smells like the sunflower oil has gone rancid in the bottles.  Dumped the batch.

Sinebrychoff Porter Tasting - 2-year, 3-year, 1.5-year clone with recipe

I’ve promised a tasting of the rye 70/-, and it’ll make its merry way here soon enough.  Beating it to the punch, though, are tasting notes about a year in the making.  Sinebrychoff Porter, a vinous Baltic beast out of Finland, was an early introduction for me into the worlds of both porter and craft beer, and has always been a favourite.  Many a night late in undergrad was wiled away at Bukowski’s over a bottle or two of Koff with a good friend and/or roommate; at the time it was offered both regular and aged 3 years, which was also my introduction to vertical tasting.

When we moved back to Chicago in 2008, I found a couple bottles on sale, which I quickly snatched up to squirrel away for a while.  In late 2009, at a hang with friends Joe, Ted, and Michael (and respective girlfriends), we did a vertical tasting of a “fresh” bottle and one of the bottles from the previous year.  The results were pretty stunning; while the fresh bottle was excellent, the smoothness of the aged bottle went above and beyond.

The other 2008 bottle, along with one from 2009, have been hanging out in my reserve collection ever since, along with a bottle of a clone I made in early 2010.  We meant to do another tasting that winter, but it never worked out; we did do a great vertical tasting of 4 years’ worth of Bourbon County Stout in the late summer before the move west, though.  We’re past due on this, though.  DeAunn loves dark beers and has never said no to a bottle of the real thing or my clone.  Her palate is also much better than mine, and I feel woefully inadequate evaluating beer on my own at this point (the vast majority of my beer would all have the descriptors “bready, crackery, tasty”).  So earlier this week together we did the deed; here are our notes.

Koff (clone, bottled 1.5 years ago)

Appearance - Opaque black with red around the edges when held to the light.  Tight head of fine espresso-coloured bubbles that dissipates after a few minutes.

Aroma - Caramel, sweet, alcohol.

Taste - Mellow, warm roastiness; burnt sugar with a muted bitterness in an aftertaste that really lasts; alcohol is present without being oppressive; very round overall; “yummy”.

Mouthfeel - Light-medium carbonation, medium body.  Fits the mellow flavour well.

Overall - Incredibly satisfying, this has aged very well.  It has a warm mellowness that goes perfectly with the cooling weather.

Sinebrychoff (2-year)

Appearance - Same opaque black, but with less red at the edges.  Head is lighter, more of a dark tan; bubbles are coarse.

Aroma - Winey, grape juice, cola.

Taste - Hop bitterness, sharp alcohol and sweet cola up front, with light roast at the end; kind of a reverse of the clone.  Doesn’t linger.  Definitely complex.

Mouthfeel - Medium carbonation, resulting in a medium-light body.

Overall - Excellent, though very different from the clone.  The extra effervescence works with the sweet cola flavour.

Sinebrychoff (3-year)

Aroma - Same colour as the 2-year.  Low carbonation evident in small, quickly dissipating head.

Appearance - A whole lot of cola, very winey, grapey.

Taste - Exceptionally round, very sweet and malty; lots of dark fruit (plums, prunes); syrupy, but with a firm bitterness in the middle; longer aftertaste than the 2-year.

Mouthfeel - Low carbonation, medium body.

Overall - An easy sipper, definitely an improvement over the 2-year; complex, with lots to savor.

Koff (Sinebrychoff Porter clone)

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.086
Projected SRM: 54.8
Projected IBU: 27.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 77%

Grains
65.1% - 10.25 lb Munich
19.0% - 3 lb Vienna
9.5% - 1.5 lb Carafa III
6.4% - 1 lb Caramunich III

Hops
.5 oz Tradition (4.6%) (60 min)
.5 oz Brewer’s Gold (9.7%) (60 min)
.5 oz Saaz (3.5%) (30 min)

Yeast
WY2124 Bohemian Lager - cake

Water additions (mash)
1 1/8 tsp    Baking soda
½ tsp        Salt

Brewday: 3 March 2010
Mash in: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.75 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 15̊P (1.061)

Pitched onto yeast cake at around 40̊F

6 March 2010
Happily fermenting away in the swamp cooler; ambient temp kept 45-50̊F

15 March 2010
Fermentation slowed, brought upstairs for d-rest

Secondary/lagering: 28 March 2010
FG: 1.022
8.25% ABV

Bottled: 9 May 2010
Bottled with 3.5 oz table sugar

Scotch Rye - FAIL

There are times when no matter what you do, the brewday goes horribly awry.  Then there are times when it’s flawed from the earliest planning stages.  This was one of the latter.

I’ve waxed poetic here about my experiences brewing with rye, with all the hassles and pleasures inherent in doing so.  My recent all-rye 70/- has actually turned out to be a wonderful beer; I’ll post a tasting on its murky goodness soon.  After having success with session-strength beers in this vein, I wanted to go after a big one: a Scotch ale, aka wee heavy.  Brewing a big nearly-all-wheat beer last winter went well; the failure on that batch was getting it to carbonate.  So I had high hopes for this one.

The recipe was about as simple as it gets: Weyermann rye malt to an OG of 1.075, English hops for bittering to 25 IBUs, and a big slurry of Wyeast 1728.  To further increase the maltiness, boil down the first runnings to a thick syrup during the rest of the sparge and boil.  If only it was simple in execution.

Trouble started early.  As difficult as rye can be to lauter, it’s equally difficult to mill.  My faithful drill peters out when I put it to work on wheat and rye, so it means it’s back to the hand crank for those beers.  This grist made for a LOT of time spent sweating over my mill.  I broke it up into four separate conditioning and milling sessions so I could actually get through it.

The mash went fine, and I was able to run off about a gallon of first runnings to boil down on the stove.  And then everything ground to a halt.  The mash set, and there was no unsticking it.  I decocted several times and infused with the sparge water at a boil to thin the mash and raise the temperature to 170F and higher, but to no effect; only a trickle would come out of the mash tun, and that little bit would stop altogether after a short time.  The wort in the mashtun was incredibly viscous, almost like room-temperature molasses; I should’ve photographed it for posterity.  My best guess is that especially at its high gravity, the rye wort’s viscosity was just too much for my bazooka screen to handle.

In the end, I ended up scooping out the mashtun, running the mash through a colander to salvage what I could of the batch; plenty of extra particulate ended up in the kettle.  After laboriously collecting 5 gallons of wort this way, I went ahead with the boil.  After an ugly 75 minutes, it was even thicker than before; the

refractometer sample was almost comically gooey, and the kettle contents were so viscous they wouldn’t pass through my funnel strainer, so I eventually removed it and dumped everything into the primary.  On top of this, the first runnings cooked down far enough that they scorched the bottom of the stovetop kettle, so crusty black flecks from that also ended up in the carboy.

After all this, I ended up with 3 ½ gallons of post-boil wort, along with all the stuff I would’ve preferred to leave behind, in a 6-gallon carboy.  This didn’t stop this monster from going crazy once the yeast cake it sat atop got to work.  I came home a couple days later to find the fermentation temperature had spiked enough to bring the swamp cooler temp to nearly 70F and blow off the airlock.  Let me repeat this: 3 ½ gallons of wort blew off the airlock on a 6-gallon carboy.  Intense.  It had made it this far, so it only seemed fair to clean up carboy, sanitize the opening, and recover it to let the yeast finish out whatever they could still do this thing.

When it came time to transfer to secondary, less than half of what was in the carboy was beer; the larger portion was trub.  Even after primary, the viscosity was so great I couldn’t get it through the racking cane.  I had to just dump the top layer of beer from the carboy into secondary, a 4-liter wine jug, the only helpful

utensil being the funnel.  I didn’t even bother taking a gravity reading; I pitched some rehydrated champagne yeast to hopefully lower the gravity further and thin out this beast.  If that doesn’t do it, I may resort to a pedio/brett regimen.

This has been a serious learning experience for me.  Possibly barring my experiences with infections, it’s also been my most frustrating batch.  I still have about a third of a sack of Weyermann rye to go; what all I’ll make with it I’m not sure, but it won’t be another beer like this.  I’ve had success with all-rye beers as well as with high-gravity beers; I plan to brew more of both, but I probably won’t combine these two concepts again.  Every batch has something to teach; some just deliver their messages more indelibly than others.  For the record, I do NOT recommend this recipe; it's here for posterity.  It definitely deserves a "brewer beware" mark of some type; if I come up with a good one, it'll appear here.

Scotch Rye

Batch size: 3.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.091
Projected SRM: 14.3 (not accounting for boiled-down first runnings)
Projected IBU: 39.3
Boil time: 75 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 55%

Grains
 100% - 20 lb Rye

Hops
1 oz Progress (6.2%) (75 min)
.5 oz Northdown (7.2%) (75 min)

Yeast
WY1728 Scottish Ale yeast - cake from Toasted Rye

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (30 min)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
 15 qts RO water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Salt

Brewday: 16 October 2011
Mash-in: 152F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 19P (1.079)

First gallon of first runnings reduced to a thick syrup on the stove, charring to a degree; added back before boil

HELLACIOUS LAUTER FAIL.  Multiple decoctions & infusions did little.  Eventually scooped & crudely strained through a colander to 5 gallons before starting boil; refractometer sample was unbelievably viscous.  Was so thick it wouldn’t even go through strainer, so everything went into the fermenter

Fermented in swamp cooler at 55-60F ambient



18 October 2011: Even though the beer only filled about half the carboy, it blew off the airlock and spiked the swamp cooler temp to 68F.  Cleaned up and replaced airlock with tin foil, back in swamp cooler at 55-60F

22 October 2011: Massive amount of particulate matter finally settling out; rye keeps beer from clearing, but there’s now liquid separate from the break, hops, and other junk in the carboy.  Out of swamp cooler at 65F ambient

Bottled: 17 February 2012
FG: unmeasured
Still incredibly thick; couldn’t start a siphon and ended up pouring it into the bottles.
Bottled 3/4 gallon with .6 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Petite Hiver

While my interest in session beers isn’t new, it was again spurred by our new home’s liquor laws that, among other things, limit beer sold (on tap at least) to 3.2% ABW (4% ABV).  Not that I’m planning to jump into commercial brewing here (or even getting a keg setup) but this seemed like a perfect opportunity to take up the challenge of getting as much flavour as possible out of a small amount of raw materials.  My recent rye 70/- may not make the grade, unfortunately; coming in at just 3.1% ABV, the hydrometer sample at bottling was very watery.  There may be more hope for the second beer from that brewday, a spiced petite saison noire, which derives much more of its character from the yeast and spices.

Saison is a very loose style, varying greatly in strength, colour, spicing, level of funkiness, etc.  I’d originally planned a big, burly saison noire with wintry spices, based on a Zymurgy article from a couple years back, for the early part of this year; when the yeast starter didn’t take off, switching to dry yeast, ditching the spices, and changing the hopping schedule transformed it into a tongue-flaying black IPA.  I’ll come back to that

high-octane saison sometime; being in a session mood, and having plans for the yeast following this batch, I scaled it back to table strength for this winter.

“Holiday spices” (cloves, ginger, allspice, nutmeg) have rarely agreed with me in beer, though there have been notable exceptions.  However, I’ve added a number of other non-Reinheitsgebot elements to beer before, including fruit, chocolate, cacao nibs, and vanilla and coffee beans.  Branching out ever so slightly, this batch will get a cinnamon stick as well as a couple vanilla beans.  My normal method for adding spices like these is to make a tincture and add the spices and liquid to secondary; I’ve tried adding them at the end of the boil, but haven’t felt as though they really came through very well.  My spices here have been marinating in a small amount of vodka for the best part of a week, I’ll hopefully be able to transfer this beer onto them in the next couple days.

My go-to saison yeast is Wyeast’s French Saison (3711), but unfortunately my LHBS was out; they recommended the White Labs Platinum strain Belgian Saison II (566) as their closest sub.  The plan was to use this low-gravity batch as a yeast starter for a Belgian dark strong ale I’m planning for next month; the last BDSA I brewed (with a cake of Wyeast 3787) finished out at a miserable 1.050, so I was anxious to see what the 3711, a ferocious attenuator in my experience, would do to a really big beer.  The ester profile of this saison de la table will determine whether I forge ahead using this yeast cake or track down a fresh smack pack and get a normal starter on the stirplate.

Especially with the spices, this small beer didn’t need too many other flavours competing for dominance.  Munich provided a malty base, with a bit of rye to add a touch of body; along with darkening the beer, the Carafa and Special B added a light roast and a little dark fruit character, respectively.  The brew went into the wee hours of the morning; especially at that hour, the weather's finally starting to get crisp.  I’m hoping this will be a lighter cold-weather alternative to the bigger, boozier beers I’ll brew this season.  It also has me feeling adventurous enough to consider doing another sessionable batch with some of those “pumpkin pie” spices that normally give me pause, to serve at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Petite Hiver - a petite saison noire spiced for winter

Batch size: 4.75 gallons
Projected OG: 1.040
Projected SRM: 25.7
Projected IBU: 14.9
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 80%

Grains
69.0% - 5 lb Munich
13.8% - 1 lb Rye
6.9% - 8 oz Organic Carafa II
3.4% - 4 oz Special B

Hops
.5 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 vial WLP566 Belgian Saison II (no starter)

Extras
1 Cinnamon stick, soaked in vodka (secondary)
2 Vanilla beans, chopped and scraped, soaked in vodka (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
4 qts RO water

Brewday: 2 October 2011
Mash-in: 150F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.25 gallons

Fermented at ambient temp (67F) for 3 days, then ramped up to 80F over 3 days

Secondary: 22 October 2011

Bottled: 12 November 2011
FG: 1.010
ABV: 3.9% - UT street legal success!
Bottled with 4.6 oz table sugar

Rye 70/-

The product of my second SLC brewday was two session-strength beers, one Scottish and the other Belgian in origin.  Of course, that doesn’t mean either one was particularly to style.  The first was a Scottish 70 shilling (70/-); the other was a petit saison, on which I’ll post shortly.

For those who don’t know of it, the shilling system denotes alcoholic strength based on the historical price of the beer per barrel, with 60/- and 90/- being the common low and high ends, respectively (though Noonan’s book on the style mentions numbers low as 42/- and as high as 140/-).  According to Noonan, Scottish beers of previous centuries were related to their English counterparts, but leaned more toward the maltier end due to longer boil times (producing more melanoidins and thus more caramel flavours), higher final gravities, and reduced hopping rates.  There is some debate (see the comments at the bottom) as to how accurate this description is for historical Scottish beers; at least from a current American homebrewing standpoint (via the BJCP guidelines), calling a beer a 70/- denotes an amber, low-strength (under 4%), malty ale.

The big deviation from the Scottish norm here is that this beer was made entirely of rye malt; this and the beer that will go on this yeast cake are the principal reasons I bought a full sack of Weyermann rye when we moved to town.  The high viscosity and slickness of rye worts struck me as particularly fitting the heavier bodied, malt-forward nature of the style; in addition, the higher mash temperatures that encourage Scottish ale’s lower attenuation should also aid in keeping the rye proteins from becoming too sticky and causing lautering problems.

Scottish ale grists are often very simple; to keep with this but add some complexity to the beer, I toasted a pound of rye malt at home, half dry toasted for a biscuit-like style and the other half wet as “caramel” rye (which is actually sold as Cara Rye by Weyermann, I’ve since learned).  The flavour of these grains on their own was excellent: nutty and slightly sweet, respectively.  I’m looking forward to see how they taste in the finished product.  A touch of chocolate rye for colour, a modest bittering charge of hops, a fresh packet of Wyeast’s Scottish Ale yeast, and we were rolling.

This beer was originally supposed to be an even lighter 60/-, but my efficiency ended up much higher than expected (ridiculously high, actually; my refractometer still looks to be calibrated).  My past with the dreaded rye lauter has seen good, bad, and ugly, and the closest I have to a “trick” for rye-heavy mashes is to get the temperature way up before lautering.  Usually, I do two batch sparges; this time, I ran off whatever would come out on its own as first runnings, then brought my first sparge water to boiling and added it right into the mash for a mashout at 170F.  The lauter came off without a hitch, though slow as expected with such a viscous wort.

Primary fermentation kicked off quickly and subsided after just a few days.  Following a day agitating it at room temp to make sure it had finished out, it’s been crash cooling until tomorrow, when I’ll bottle it and put the next beer in the series, a Scotch ale (aka wee heavy), on the yeast.

Toasted Rye

Batch size: 4.75 gallons
Projected OG: 1.037
Projected SRM: 10
Projected IBU: 15.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 95%???

Grains
81.6% - 5 lb Rye
8.2% - 8 oz Caramel Rye (home-toasted)
8.2% - 8 oz Biscuit Rye (home-toasted)
2.0% - 2 oz Chocolate Rye

Hops
.5 oz Challenger (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY1728 Scottish Ale yeast (no starter)

Water additions (mash)
4 qts RO water

Brewday: 2 October 2011
Mash-in: 9 qts @ 158F for 60 minutes
1st sparge: 10 qts @ 212F
2nd sparge: 10 qts @ 212F
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 7.9P (1.031)

Used the first sparge as a mashout to reach the proper temp to keep the rye from getting sticky.

Started in swamp cooler at 57F ambient; 60-65F once fermentation started

13 October 2011: Krausen dropped; brought to ambient (70F) for a day to make sure it was finished, followed by several days crash cooling

Bottled: 16 October 2011FG: 1.013 (1.014 @ 35F)
ABV: 3.1%

Bottled with 2.6 oz table sugar
Hydrometer sample tasted very watery, unfortunately

Final 2011 hops update

Just a note to close out the tumultuous cross-country hop growing season.  Since pruning back the dead or dying growth, the root systems have proven themselves to be quite hearty, the new bines springing up like the weeds they are.  The Willamettes have made the most progress, climbing the trellis pole.  Since I wasn’t expecting them to produce any more cones this year, I just let them grow off the trellis; they’ve developed some decent bushy structures.  I look forward to getting next year’s bines trained on the lines and hopefully avoiding the stress of another big move.

On a related note, I discovered a hop plant growing literally around the corner from us in front of a fourplex while walking our new dog, Gizmo.  As no one’s picked the cones, it’s pretty clear they’re just decorative, but they looked great through late summer.  Their type is uncertain, but I’ve read that most decorative hop plants that are sold are Nugget.  They’re certainly past their prime now, though perhaps they’d be useful with further age for a lambic.

Robust Rye Porter

The second beer of my first Salt Lake brewday was another dark beer to welcome the coming cooler months (which haven’t really made much of an appearance here yet).  I love porters with good chocolate notes and restrained but present roast; Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald and Founders Porter are always welcome in my glass.  Along with those specifications, I also wanted to include a (nearly obligatory now) significant portion of rye.  This is a recipe I’ve had on the books for quite some time, and I’m happy to have had the opportunity to finally brew it.

The base of this beer was equal parts 2-row and rye malt, with nearly as much brown malt for a “classic” porter toastiness.  The 2-row I got here is from Malteurop; according to my new LHBS, they preferred it in a side-by-side brewing with Rahr’s 2-row, which is a bit more expensive; at some point I’ll make something lighter and more pale malt-forward to check for myself, but for now it’s worked out just fine.  The small amount of black patent and American chocolate (lighter in colour and flavour than UK chocolate) add to that restrained roast presence.  Northern Brewer hops provide solid bitterness and perhaps a touch of mint, and the WLP007 ferments out well.

Other than some mash hangups in the second sparge, the brewing went well.  I got a late start with the starter--sadly, the pun is unintended--so in lieu of waiting too long after brewing to pitch, I picked up a second vial of yeast to start off things, then pitched the starter when it was ready to go.  The higher gravity (as compared to the dry stout) will help to pass the coming colder nights.  I love hoppy beers, but I’m looking forward to enjoying these dark, malty treats as the leaves change.

Robust Rye Porter
Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.060
Projected SRM: 33.3
Projected IBU: 45.6
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 80%

Grains
34.8% - 4 lb 2-row
34.8% - 4 lb Rye
26% - 3 lb Brown malt
2.2% - 4 oz Black patent
2.2% - 4 oz American chocolate

Hops
1 oz Northern Brewer (10.5%) (60 min)
.5 oz Northern Brewer (15 min)

Yeast
WLP007 Dry English Ale - 3.5L starter

Water additions (mash)
6 qts RO water

Brewday: 3 September 2011
Mash-in: 14.5 qts @ 154F for 2 hours - dropped to 148F
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 11.8P (1.047)

Into swamp cooler at 65F; waiting for starter to settle out for pitching.

Still waiting for the starter to finish out 20 hours later, so pitched a second (much fresher) tube of 007 for now.

Pitched the starter 27 hours after chilling.

Bottled: 24 September 2011
FG: 1.018

ABV: 5.5%
Bottled 4.8 gallons with 3.5 oz table sugar.

SLC Dry Stout

Other than working through my backlog of vintage bombers--I bottle one from each batch, and had them stretching back three years and understandably some have stood the test of time better than others–our homebrew consumption has been limited to IPAs and lacto-soured beers since we got to town. Ready for a change of pace, my first Salt Lake City brewday was devoted to the other end of the spectrum: dark, roasty, and malty.

The first beer in the mashtun was a fairly conventional dry stout. Last year’s stouts taught me to stick with darker British roast malts for these beers; the depths of darkness they impart do not disappoint. The water report here shows a lot of minerals coming out of the tap, so I cut that supply with a significant portion of RO water. Cereal mashing still gives me the willies, for some reason; it was probably unnecessary in this case, but I went through it anyway with my flaked barley. Moderate bittering came from Challenger and Northern Brewer, and Nottingham yeast came in to give a light English flavour and flocc out quickly.

I did another overnight mash for this one to move along the brewday, particularly as I also brewed a robust rye porter following the stout. It took a little while to get my bearings brewing in our new digs, but it’s really nice to have the turkey fryer set up right outside the kitchen door, all of maybe ten feet from the sink. The beer sat waiting to be bottled for an extra week and a half past when I wanted to get it bottled, but no harm was done. Just waiting for this batch (and its brother porter) to carb up and get us in the mood for our first Mountain Time Zone autumn.

SLC Dry Stout

Batch size: 5.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.044
Projected SRM: 32.4
Projected IBU: 31.7
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 83%

Grains
62.5% - 5 lb 2 row
25% - 2 lb Flaked barley
6.25% - 8 oz UK RB
6.25% - 8 oz UK Chocolate

Hops
.5 oz Northern Brewer (10.5%) (60 min)
.5 oz Challenger (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg Nottingham


Water additions (mash)
4 qts RO water


Brewday: 3 September 2011
Cereal mash: Flaked barley and 1 lb 2-row with 5 qts @ 125F for 15 minutes.
Heat slowly to 165F and add to main mash
Mash-in: 5 qts (plus 5 qts in cereal mash) @ 154F overnight

1st sparge: 10 qts @ 200F
2nd sparge: 10 qts @ 180F
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 8.8P (1.035)

Into swamp cooler in low 60s; activity within 15 hours.


Bottled: 25 September 2011
FG: 1.011
ABV: 4.3%
Bottled 5 gallons with 3 oz table sugar.

Utah Beer Tasting

This evening DeAunn and I sampled three offerings from two of Utah’s premiere breweries, Epic and Uinta Brewing Companies.  While not all of the beers we tried were necessarily to our tastes, they all were flavourful and worth trying; at least two of them we’ll have to try again.

Epic Brewing’s Sour Apple Saison: Voluminous cumulous head on a golden bodied beer.  Big wheat & nearly hefeweizen aroma.  Did not taste of sour apple, but big estery quality of Saison Dupont (of which we’re not really fans; in yeast terms, we both prefer French to Belgian saison strains).  Lots of light fruit and a quenching finish, but overwhelmed by an almost celery flavour we get from wit yeasts.  Not our favourite.

Epic Brewing’s Brainless With Cherries: Small white head that dissipates even on pouring with a rich ruby beer.  Aroma starts with big cherry, but later transitions to a metallic aroma.  Flavour is heavily toward a Duvel-type Belgian golden strong; some cherry left late on the tongue.  Alcoholic, to be sure; tasty, and worth another sampling.

Uinta Brewing’s Crooked Line Series - Cockeyed Cooper Bourbon Barrel Barley Wine Ale: Pours deep amber with little head.  Aroma of heavy bourbon and bittering hops; smells like it weighs in as a young Sierra Nevada Bigfooot.  In tasting, though, it’s much more mellow; heavy bittering hops are subdued with a boozy, malty flavour coming through.  Finish is relatively bitter, but very enjoyable.  Definitely worth having young, and possibly putting away for a year and trying against a fresh bottle.

Home toasting malt

Three years ago I started growing hops in an effort to take a more active role in controlling my ingredients.  While we lack the real estate (and time and resources) to do any growing and malting of grain, we do have the ability to tweak some malt by home toasting it.

As previous posts indicate, malted rye is a grain in which I have a great interest.  I have a couple all-rye beers on the schedule in the next month or so, and toasting a small amount of rye malt sounded like a good proposition to add additional character to what will be essentially a Scottish 60/-.  As there won’t be much to the grist of this beer–just over six pounds total–I toasted just one pound to use as an accent.  Half a pound was dry toasted for a biscuit flavour; the other half pound I prepared as a light crystal malt.

A number of sources delve into toasting your own malt, including Randy Mosher’s ever-excellent Radical Brewing and John Palmer’s trusty How To Brew.  I followed Palmer’s method this time out, which is pretty

straightforward. There are other, more involved methods out there for making crystal malt that most likely create a sweeter, more accurately caramel flavour; depending how this batch turns out, I may try one of them next time.  To be fair, Palmer doesn't stipulate this as the way to make crystal malt, but as a way to produce more caramel flavour than dry toasting.  Smelling and tasting the grain just out of the oven and over the last couple days, though, I’m pretty happy with what I have right now.

The rye filled the house with an incredible bready, nutty aroma as it was toasted; I’d recommend doing this just for the domestic aromatics alone.  The dry toasted rye had a pleasing, light roasty/toasty flavour, though shy of a Biscuit or Victory malt.  The crystal rye was sweet, nutty, and had a touch of fruitiness to it.  I’ll be very interested to see how these grains impact this very uncomplicated grain bill.

For dry toasted malt: Make a shallow grain bed in a foil-lined pan and put in 350F oven for 30 minutes, turning grain after 15 minutes.

For crystal malt (~20L): Soak grain in filtered water for 1 hour.  Strain, then make a shallow grain bed in a foil-lined pan and put in 350F oven for 1 hour, turning grain every 15 minutes.

Most sources recommend storing the toasted grain and agitating it daily for two weeks before using it to allow the harsher aromatics to dissipate.

How to kill hop bines

In planning our move to Salt Lake City for doctoral school, we decided to keep our 3-year-old hop plants; we figured they’d be difficult to transport (each planter has 90 pounds of soil in it) but it would’ve been a shame to leave them just after they started really producing.  They hadn't seen anything but ambient rainfall for the three weeks just before the move, as we'd been out of town, and they seemed to be doing just fine with that level of neglect; they seemed more than hardy enough to make the move.  We were towing my car behind the moving truck, so just before leaving, I put down a tarp in the back seat and lugged them all into it; at least there I could water them and they could get some sunlight.

After four days of travel from Chicago, though, the bines were showing some serious fatigue.  Particularly on our last day of driving, out of Colorado and across the arid Utah flats, they visibly shriveled in the driest air they’d ever experienced.  Once we arrived, our priority was unpacking, getting the new house livable, and taking all manner of entrance exams and placement auditions.  My car got pulled around back and out of the way, but it was several days before I had a chance to talk to our new landlord about putting them out.  Thankfully, he had no problems with the plants or their placement on the south face of the house, so I finally pulled them out of the car and put them back in the open air.

By then, though, the damage was done.  I’d tried to keep them pretty well watered before I was able to get them out of the car, but they were pretty fried from the dry heat and lack of full sun.  The bines were pretty well dried out, the hops all browned or browning.  I kept them pretty well drenched, but that didn’t do much for the crispy bines.  However, hope springs eternal: new green shoots appeared near the bases of the bines on all three plants.  Looks like the root systems are still doing well.  Yesterday, I cut down the dead bines to let the new shoots grow unimpeded.  I don’t expect them to produce any more cones this year, but it should be interesting to see how much they do grow before autumn really puts them out of commission for the season.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the Utah weather does for them next spring.  For now, it's time to get acquainted with the area, the school, and plan the first Utah batches.

Sour Rye Saison

For my last Chicago brewday, I was looking to make a beer that would refresh us as we unpack in our new place in Salt Lake City.  Given how well last summer’s saison went over, another one, lower in gravity, was in order.  Rye has found a solid place in my brewery over the last year, adding its spiciness and slick mouthfeel, so I wanted to make it a major player in this recipe.

I was also intrigued by how the Cherry Sour turned out following a long sour worting; it produced a prominent, very clean lactic sourness.  While using a neutral ale yeast made for a fairly one-dimensional end product, it seemed this method, applied gently, could add another layer of complexity to what the saison yeast would contribute.  I had just a couple ounces of Amarillo hops left to help build on the citrus character of the sour worting; to augment this I made my first foray into the world of New Zealand hops by adding an ounce of Pacific Jade, known for their citrus and black pepper notes (which should go well with the yeast).

When I started using rye, I followed conventional wisdom in keeping the percentage low to limit its purported gumminess from stopping up the mash.  After reading about a beer made with 100% malted rye, I went bigger; I did an English bitter made almost entirely of rye, and from then on I haven’t had any of the mashing/sparging problems attributed to rye (or wheat, for that matter).  Or at least I hadn’t until this brewday.

I mashed low to keep the final beer dry, as I did with the previous saison; despite the high percentage of rye in the mash and being in the temp range that can make its proteins so notoriously gummy, my experience with my system gave me confidence that I’d come sailing through this without incident.  On top of that, my poorly insulated mashtun lost almost 15 degrees (F) during the long mash.  The time came to start the vorlauf; I attached the hose, opened up the valve per usual, and after the first small surge, it slowed to a trickle.  Minutes

went by, and next to nothing came out.  I stirred the mash, I blew back through the tube, but nothing got it moving.  So I resorted to a method I consider fairly un-French; I decocted.

This traditional German technique is used to raise the mash temperature by drawing off a thick portion of the mash (lots of grain, a little wort), boiling it, then adding it back to the main mash; it also tends to increase mash efficiency and produce maltier beers.  I’ve only decocted once, to add extra maltiness to a small batch of weizenbock; in this case, though, I figured raising the mash temperature to “unglue” the rye proteins was my best bet and this was the only option I had for doing that on my setup.  Unfortunately, the first decoction of just a couple quarts of thick mash didn’t have much effect at all, not even getting it back up to mash temp.  So I doubled the size for the second decoction, which bumped up the temp to 160F.  And the runoff was still interminably slow.

Eventually, I just brought the water for the first sparge to a boil and put it in on top of the mash, bringing the temp to 176F.  That’s hot enough to start extracting unwanted tannins from the grains, but I hoped it would also be hot enough unstick the damn rye.  And the runoff was STILL slow...but moving.  The brewday ended up much longer than planned, but I was able to collect my runnings and get the thing to the boil.  Between the Munich malt and the decoctions, this will probably fall on the maltier side of things than saisons normally do.

Of course, since I was sour worting this beer, I wasn’t even close to the end.  After a 20-minute boil to get past the hot break and sterilize the wort, I cooled it down to about 115F, pitched my lacto starter, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it in the swamp cooler to let the bugs stew just overnight.  The next day I found that I must’ve done a pretty poor job keeping the plastic wrap right down on the wort (to inhibit unwanted bugs that need oxygen, like acetobacter), as the wort had a frizzy, frothy head unlike the thick, controlled scum that showed up on the Cherry Sour.  Still, it didn’t smell out of bounds, so to speak, and it was about to get a full 60-minute boil, so I didn’t worry too much about it.

The normal boil proceeded without incident, other than it seemed impossible to keep this one from boiling over; even though I’d boiled it past the hot break before souring, the head as it came to boil was immense, it still billowed up despite spritzing with a water bottle and keeping the flame low, and it persisted to some degree through the end of the boil.  I chilled and set it aside, but was unable to get back to it for almost a full day.  Eager to avoid a double souring, I brought it back to a short boil and chilled it again; on reheating, it had

a really wonderful, gentle fruit aroma that I attribute to the late hops.

Primary fermentation chugged away, and the dry hops went in right on top when it subsided.  I’d only planned to have them in there for about 5 days, but with us busy packing, painting and cleaning for the imminent move, I didn’t have a chance to bottle before leaving for my music festival.  By the time we get back, they will have had 3 ½ weeks of contact time.  After all the hassle of this brew session, I’m looking forward to bottling this one, along with the Russian imperial stout, which has been sitting on oak for 2 months now.

Sour Rye Saison - Farmhouse ale with lacto starter

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.048
Projected SRM: 8.4
Projected IBU: 28.9
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 80%

Grains
50% - 5 lb Rye malt
50% - 5 lb Munich

Hops
1 oz Amarillo (7.8%) (20 min)
.5 oz Amarillo (10 min)
.5 oz Pacific Jade (13.4%) (10 min)
.5 oz Amarillo (Dry hop 5 days)
.5 oz Pacific Jade (Dry hop 5 days)

Yeast
Sour starter (pre-boil)
WY3711 French Saison - 3L starter from stirplate (primary)

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
2 g Chalk

Brewday: 2 July 2011
Mash-in: 12.5 qts @ 148F for 2 hours - added .5 qt to bring down temp
Temp drop to 134F; viscous & very slow runoff
1st decoction - 2 qts thick mash boiled for 5 minutes; raised temp to 144F
2nd decoction - 4 qts thick mash boiled for 5 minutes; raised temp to 160F
Sparge still stuck; eventually just added 1st sparge in with mash
1st sparge: 10 qts @ 212F - raised temp to 176F
STILL running off super slow!
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons
Pre-sour OG: 10.8 P (1.044)
Boiled through hot break, cooled to 115F, pitched sour starter, covered in plastic wrap, kept warm in swamp cooler overnight

3 July 2011: Following 20 hours souring, normal 60-minute boil
4 July 2011: Didn’t pitch yeast yesterday; brought back to boil, cooled again, aerated, pitched - wonderful fruity aromatics on reheating

Fermentation started in basement at ambient (68F) for 2 days, then brought upstairs to ramp up

Dry hop: 11 July 2011

Bottled: 6 August 2011
FG: 1.010
ABV: 5%
Sample nicely tangy, but dominates the yeast; next time only sour a portion of the wort
Bottled with 5.5 oz table sugar

First tasting: 20 August 2011
Bright and fruity from the souring, but not overly so.  Good breadiness as it warms, but sourness overshadows the yeast character.