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.