Toasted Oatmeal Stout & the Simplicity of the One-Beer Brewday

I finally had a chance to put the oats I toasted to use.  While stout is a favoured style this time of year for us, the oatmeal variety has usually left me wanting.  The main problem, of course, are my own expectations: what do I think oats are going to add to all that stouty goodness already present?  In my mind, it's probably more what you get from lactose: a bump in sweetness and body.  In reality, there's an added fullness, but a certain slickness on the palate as well.  Why not just throw in some lactose and call this a sweet stout then?  Cos I really want to wrap my head (and taste buds) around the concept of oatmeal stout in a new way.  That, and these oats smelled so damn good.

Simple American base malt balanced with equal parts roasted barley, chocolate malt, and caramel malt set the stage.  While I often like to go with the more heavily roasted British grains in dark beers, I wanted to make sure

that coffee and roast characters didn't steal the stage from the brother grain that gives this style its name, so I went with the American versions for colour and the normal stout personality.  The oats had plenty of time to mellow and let any harsh aromas and flavours that developed from their time in the oven to dissipate before use; when I opened the bag of toasted wonder on brewday, the first thing that came to mind was coconut.  In these cold days, there was something about that scent that will not get old for me.  A bit of Galena for bittering without trying to make too much of a hoppy impression, a small starter of White Labs Dry English yeast for a bit of character and a respectably low finishing gravity, and it was time to brew.

Nailed the mash-in temp; managed to put it right where it should have been, sometimes more of a struggle for me than it should be.  Mash efficiency came in a bit low; not sure if that came from the wild card contribution of the oats--uncertain what to really expect from them in terms of fermentable sugar--or the fact that it's just been a while since I've brewed.  The day went on, and the brew came to a happy end in the fermenter.  The best part of it all, honestly, was how well everything seemed to come together because I wasn't also working out the logistics of a second beer at the same time.  It's been quite a while since I've done a (relatively) simple one-beer brewday, and it went so smoothly it almost seemed untrustworthy.  You could get used to this kind of ease.  Thing is, I'm too greedy to make that a normal thing; I want to get the maximum return (= multiple full fermenters, of different styles if possible) out of a given brewday.  Oh, the incredible struggles of the homebrewer.

 Toasted Oatmeal Stout

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.048
Projected SRM: 29.1
Projected IBU: 34.2
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%

Grains
74.0% - 7 lb Malteurop 2-row
10.1% - 15.3 oz Organic quick oats, toasted
5.3% - 8 oz Roasted barley (US)
5.3% - 8 oz Chocolate (US)
5.3% - 8 oz Briess C-80

Hops
.7 oz Galena (13.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
WLP007 Dry English Ale - 1L starter

Extras
1 tbsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water Additions (mash)
5 qts Distilled water

Brewday: 17 November 2012
Mash: 153F for 75 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 11P (1.044)

The toasted oats have a great nutty aroma in the bag, even with a coconut overtone; continues into the brewkettle
5.3 gallons into the fermenter
Fermented in swamp cooler at 58F ambient

20 November 2012: Active primary fermentation complete; yeast has flocced out and krauesen has completely dropped.  Agitation of the yeast cake yields no renewed activity.  Pulled from swamp cooler and brought to room temp.

Bottled: 8 December 2012
FG: 1.016
ABV: 4.2%
Bottled with 3.5 oz table sugar.

Apple Pie Cyser

Since doing more studying and sampling research on them this summer, ciders and meads have really taken the front seat on my brewing calendar.  This batch combined these two strains: cyser is the love child of mead and cider, a beverage neither DeAunn nor I had tried, but which sounded damned delicious to both of us.  We picked up a couple gallons of fresh-pressed cider (and a couple of carving pumpkins) a couple weeks before Halloween from a local cider mill, and added a two pounds of local honey.  A vial of the White Labs English Cider yeast and we were off.

I kept the fermentation temp down, hoping to avoid a lot of hot alcohol presence; this was planned for this Christmas season, so aging needed to be kept to a minimum. The work paid off: after nearly a month in primary, it emerged semi-dry, with great apple and honey character, and just a touch of alcohol presence.  Moving to secondary for a month of further aging, I added Bentonite to help it drop clear.  Along with that I'm including a few pie spices of DeAunn's choosing: cassia bark (cinnamon), grated nutmeg, and clove.  For the spicing step, I split the cyser into two one-gallon batches, one of which received oak along with the spices.  I found the cassia at our old spice shop back in Chicago over the summer, and really like its sweet, spicy flavour; I added a couple pieces of it to each secondary.  My understanding is that a little bit of clove will go a long way, so I'll split a single clove in half, one part for each batch; trying to avoid overdoing the nutmeg, I'll add just a little of that as well.  To further reduce their impact, I'll give the cinnamon and oak a week or so head start before adding these more assertive spices.

The challenge now will be to make sure that the spices don't throw off the excellent flavour it had coming out of secondary.  Which means periodic sampling every few days; how sad.  As long as I'm careful to not expose it to an infection (and don't "sample" half of it before bottling) I can look forward to a nice seasonal drink for the Yuletide season.

Apple Pie Cyser

Projected OG: 1.085
Volume: 2 gallons

Fermentables
2 gallons Farnsworth Farms Cider
2 lb Cox Honeyland Honey

Yeast
WLP775 English Cider

Extras
1 tsp Pectic enzyme
1 tsp Yeast nutrient
1 tsp Yeast energizer

Brewday: 20 October 2012
Fermented in swamp cooler in low 60s F ambient

Secondary: 17 November 2012
SG: 1.010
Great semi-sweet finish with just a little alcohol harshness; will have to monitor in secondary to make sure the spices don’t get too overwhelming
Split into two 1-gallon batches for aging - initial spices added

Spicing:
.2 oz Saigon cassia cinnamon - both batches
1.1 oz Medium-dark toast oak, bourbon soaked - Batch B

Spicing, part 2: 28 November 2012
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg - both batches
½ clove - both batches

Bottled: 30 December 2012
FG: 1.005
ABV: 10.5%
Bottled still.

Tasting: Sharp with lots of apple snap.  The cinnamon came through like a champ, even adding a bit of a tongue-numbing quality; will plan to increase the amounts of the other spices next time to keep up with it.  As of today (3 March 2013) the oaked version is still aging; don't tell DeAunn, she'll tear through it like a chainsaw.

Home toasting malt: Gluten-free edition

Here in Salt Lake we had our first big snow of the season last weekend; in about a day and a half we had more accumulation than we had all of last winter.  For me, of course, this ushers in thoughts of beers on the darker, richer, and heavier end of the scale.  I've never brewed an oatmeal stout, but have contemplated finally doing so; the slick, smooth oat character balancing the stout roast struck me as a proper aim for this more tempestuous season.  Just adding oats to a standard stout recipe wouldn't be enough, though; it seemed only proper to give this adjunct a bit of toasting to tease out a bit more character.

Running parallel with my desire to enhance the flavour of a cold-weather classic was my ongoing desire to produce alcoholic beverages for my gluten-sensitve spouse.  During the summer, DeAunn's tastes tended toward cider and perry, with the occasional semi-sweet melomel added to this sweeter, effervescent mix.  Now that the seasons have changed, though, her tongue has headed back for a more malt-based alternative; the local GF beer option, Epic Brewing's Glutenator, has really hit her fancy.  I haven't experimented very much at all yet with GF malted grains, but since I know how much she loves dark beers, an oatmeal stout with an oat malt base seemed like a great GF winter offering.

On to the grain prep.  It started with a pound and a half of organic flaked "quick" oats from Whole Foods.  The web and homebrew forums (and perennial favourite text Radical Brewing) offer plenty of information on giving grains a light toasting; a slightly deeper colour and mouth-watering, nutty, "oatmeal cookie" smell was pretty easy to achieve.  But what about the roasted-grain colour and character for the GF version?  For this, I set out to roast a small amount of quick oats to that chocolate or roasted barley level required for the right look and taste for a stout.  The oat-based beer was going to be a 2-gallon test batch as it was, so just a half pound of roasted oats struck me as plenty for this outing.  I found instructions on home roasting barley to chocolate malt or roasted barley levels; given the thickness of the oats I toned down the temps at first, but in the end moved into the suggested range, which yielded the proper results (along with smoke starting to billow from the oven, as the instructions promised).  The roasted oats ended up a bit lighter in colour than I'd hoped, but definitely have the right acrid, coffee-ish aroma.  I'm confident that they'll also give me my desired SRM; if it ends up on the brown side, though, I'll add a bit of coffee to enhance all aspects of this stout.  Both sets of toasted/roasted grains were given a minimum of two weeks to mellow before they were allowed anywhere near a beer; the "young" charred flavours and aromas of these grains can easily overwhelm a batch, so they require proper time to come into balance.

I'm looking forward to brewing the "regular" oatmeal stout later today.  I miscalculated on my LHBS's supplies for the GF version, though; it seems they don't stock oat malt, so the test batch will have to wait for now.  If this works out, I may have a great way to keep my wife in beverages of her choice during the coming months of dark and cold.


Toasted oats
-Thick layer (1.5 lbs) @ 350F for ~2 hours
-Turned every 15 min
-Wt reduced by .7 oz by the end
-Deep golden colour, "oatmeal cookie" aroma while toasting

"Roasted" oats
-Thinner layer (8 oz)
-350F for 2.5 hours, 450F for 40 minutes
-Turned every 15-20 minutes
-Wt reduced by .5 oz by the end
-Chocolate colour, similar to Cocoa Pebbles, honestly; burnt, acrid odour by the end, accompanied by smoke

Both batches left to air out for 2+ weeks

Bitters abound

I'd say I'm way overdue to visit England.  While I'd love to see the pastoral countryside that Ralph Vaughan Williams depicted in music during the first half of the past century, I definitely need to spend some time down the pub with a few hand-pulled pints of ordinary, best, and/or extra special bitter.  While I've enjoyed British-styled pale ales in the States, especially on cask, I've never had the opportunity to revel in the "real thing."  Until I manage to finagle myself into the British Isles, I'll have to make due by brewing my own, five gallons at a time.

I enjoy the challenge of brewing session beers (below 4.5% ABV, as defined by some) in general, and it's one that I still strive to perfect.  British pale ales, particular the lowest gravity ordinary bitters, have been source of immense brewing pleasure for me over the years; finding the balance between malt, hops, and characterful yeast in a low-alcohol package has put me to the test and has at times yielded phenomenal beers.  With cooler weather approaching (and now upon us) this seemed a perfect style to keep me (and others) off the streets and indoors sipping pint after pint of beautifully balanced easy-drinking beer.

The wort was relatively straight ahead, mimicking some of my early successes in the style: neutral American base malt with a fair measure of crystal for residual sweetness, followed up by a bit of brown sugar to up fermentability.  This was a split batch; one half received a pretty traditional hop schedule of Kent Goldings

and Fuggles, the other half built on Willamettes and Styrian Goldings that worked so well in my early attempts with bitters, specifically in one I named S.O.B. (for "Standard/Ordinary Bitter").  Two different English yeasts added a bit more interest.  And with that, we were off.

The batch with the Willamettes and Styrians ended up a little higher in gravity than I intended, moving into the special bitter range, but everything else went pretty well according to plan.  These beers sat a bit longer in the fermenters than I would've preferred; while bitters can turn around in as little as a week and are often best as fresh as possible, these had to wait for about a month before I managed to bottle them.  I was worried when I sampled a couple early bottles; one batch had me concerned that the yeast had flocced out enough to make carbonation difficult, and the other that it had sat long enough to pick up a bit of acetobacter.  After an additional week and a half of sitting, though, everything seems to have pretty much come out all right.  The more tradition bitter is smooth and has a nice malty finish, while the S.O.B. has a bit more initial bite from the Styrians.  This has the makings of a fine early autumn, to be sure.

Double Batch Ordinary Bitter - Trad Bitter & S.O.B.
Batch size: 10 gallons
Projected OG: 1.043
Projected SRM: 7.1
Projected IBU: 33.8/35.0
Boil time: 70 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 89%

Grains/Fermentables
9 lb Malteurop 2-row
2 lb C 40
1 lb Carapils
1 lb Light brown sugar (8 oz per batch; 60 min)

Hops (Trad)
.5 oz Phoenix (10.2%) (60 min)
1 oz EKG (5.8%) (10 min)
1 oz Fuggle (4.2%) (10 min)

Hops (S.O.B.)
1 oz Willamette (4.7%) (60 min)
.7 oz Willamette (20 min)
1 oz Styrian Goldings (3.2%) (15 min)
1 oz Styrian Goldings (5 min)

Yeast
Trad - WY1968 London ESB
S.O.B. - WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale

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

Water additions
9 qts RO water (mash)
1 g Gypsum (mash)
1 g Salt (mash)
4 g Gypsum (2 g each boil)

Brewday: 2 September 2012

Mash: 154F for 4 hours
1st sparge: 22 qts @ 200F
2nd sparge: 23 qts @ 190F
Pre-boil volume: 14 gallons
Pre-boil gravity (w/o sugar): 7.1P (1.028)

Trad fermenter volume: 5.1 gallons
OG: 10.0P (1.040)

S.O.B. fermenter volume: 4.8
OG: 11.6P (1.046) - now a special bitter, apparently

Fermented in swamp coolers @ 62F ambient

Bottled: 29 September 2012
Trad FG: 1.006
ABV: 4.4%

S.O.B. FG: 1.007
ABV: 5.1%

Each bottled with 2 oz light brown sugar.

Tasting: Both batches ended up on the watery side, with a decent malt presence.  They share an off-flavour, though, that I can't quite place; at first I thought it might be acetobacter, but that hasn't developed.  Possibly oxidation?

Home-pressed ciders

Following our travels this summer, DeAunn has really embraced both mead and cider (particularly perry), so when we discovered quite a bit of available fruit open for the picking on the mean streets of SLC's 9th & 9th neighbourhood, we got right down to it.  Collecting a five-gallon bucket of apples on our first tentative venture, we juiced the apples in our home juicer, yielding a little under a gallon of juice by the time it made it to secondary.  It was a fun, if time-consuming, experience, and goaded us on to further renegade picking adventures.

My LHBS rents apple grinders and presses by the day, so I reserved them for the following weekend and we headed out to harvest more fruit.  We ended up bringing in two buckets each of pears and apples; the pears we ground and pressed on their own for a bit under two gallons of perry, and the apples yielded right around two gallons of cider when combined with four pounds of frozen blueberries.  While fun, the grinding and pressing were a lot of work and took literally all night, leaving us exhausted by the end.  I've done some online research and am already ruminating on constructing a grinder and press for our future cider adventures.

For yeast, I used White Labs' English Cider for the first batch, then repitched it into the blueberry cider.  As DeAunn wanted to ensure a predictable fermentation for the perry, I went with the Lalvin Narbonne yeast, which I've used for both the meads we've made so far and should purportedly leave a fruitiness in the end product.  While I added no extras to the first small batch of cider, I did go ahead and add a bit of yeast nutrient and energizer to the perry and blueberry cider at the start to help along fermentation.

I've been pretty cavalier about taking gravity readings for these ciders; especially when it comes to adding fruit to the primary, it seems difficult to really get a handle on the OG when I'm going ahead and pitching yeast before the sugars are really evenly distributed.  If/when I move to more full-sized batches I'll take more care wth the measurements.  Unfortunately, I fear that I may have waited too long to move the latter two batches; while the first cider seems to be sitting pretty in a glass secondary, the perry and blueberry cider have been sitting in thin plastic fermenters for better than a month now.  Finally checking them just a little while ago, their odor indicates likely acetobacter infections in both.  All that work may have been for naught, just because I haven't had time to mess with these little batches.  I'll plan to give them closer consideration over the weekend, but I'm not hopeful.  At least we should have that first batch left for quaffing.

Local Cider

Batch size: 3 qts
OG: 1.038

Fermentables
~45 lb Found, hand-picked apples

Yeast
WLP775 English Cider

Brewday: 4 September 2012
Quartered & cored each apple, then put in water bath to keep from oxidizing immediately.  Juiced in home juicer.  Whole process took several hours; looking forward to using an actual cider press on larger batches of apples (and pears?) soon.

Secondary: 9 September 2012

Bottled: 27 October 2012
FG: 1.004
ABV: 4.4%

Bottled with .9 oz light brown sugar.
=====

9th & 9th Perry and Blueberry Cider - from fruit hand-harvested from neighbourhood trees

Perry
OG: 1.048
Volume: 1.7 gallons
Lalvin 71B-1122

Blueberry Cider
OG: unmeasured
Volume: 2 gallons
4 lb Blueberries, frozen
WLP775 English Cider - yeast cake from Local Cider

Extras (each batch)
1 tsp Pectic enzyme
1 tsp Yeast nutrient
1 tsp Yeast energizer

Brewday: 9 September 2012
Ground and crushed all fruit on equipment rented from LHBS; very labour- and time intensive

Fermentation started at ambient 70F, then after 9 hours moved to water bath at 65F ambient

Perry picked up an acetobacter infection; dumped.

Tasting: Local Cider finished very dry, but retained a very perfumey apple blossom nose (thanks, WLP 775!).  Flavour was of a dry white wine with the suggestion of apples.  As of today (3 March 2013) the blueberry cider is still sitting in primary.  The berries have formed a barrier that keeps any acetobacter growth in the fermenter (which is undoubtedly there, given the thin plastic and the number of times I've moved it) from directly contacting the liquid.  The only reason it hasn't been bottled is my incredible laziness.

Summer hop picking

Coming off 6 weeks on the road this summer and pretty much jumping right into the busiest semester of doctoral study we've had so far has left me very short on time for keeping up to date here.  I've finally carved out a little time and plan to do a bit of catching up, starting with covering this season's hop harvest.

A dutiful friend kept the hops watered in my absence, and we returned to see them in fine form.  Following the trauma it endured last winter, the Goldings plant produced no cones this year; it was hard to tell at first, though, as the Centennial bines had grown over to the adjacent plot and set up shop there, producing .6 ounces dry all told.  The Willamettes took top honors as they have in the past, producing a bounty of sizable cones that came in at 1.6 ounces dry.

Ideally, I'd like to use these homegrown hops for a wet-hopped beer, but the timing simply didn't work out this time; it was getting late in the season when I finally picked them as it was.  Maybe next year I'll be able to plan out a brewday for when the hops are at their peak.

Speaking of wet hopping, I took part in a little communal hop picking for local brewpub Desert Edge in the latter part of August.  The brewers went out the day before to an undisclosed area of Parley's Canyon outside Salt Lake and cut garbage bags full of wild hop bines to use in an annual golden ale named Radius, for which all the ingredients are sourced within one hundred miles of the city.  Over the course of the day, the assembled civilian hop pickers harvested nineteen buckets of wet hops that went into this year's brew; I stayed on for about five hours, enjoying complimentary pours of house beers as we went.  It's not my favourite local brewpub, but as one finds in many situations, the beer's quality improved greatly when it became free.  In addition, the brewers held a pickers appreciation party about a month later, pouring complimentary Radius (and other house beers) for the assembled helpers and sending each one home with a hand-labeled bottle.  Apparently this year's batch wasn't as hop forward as it's been in the past, but it's certainly not an offensive brew; I still have my bottle, and have plans to crack it before it's sat for too long.  For anyone in the SLC area, I highly recommend taking part in this event next year; it's good fun with good people.

Two Meads

After an unexplained illness and a bit of research back in June, DeAunn thought she might have a gluten allergy.  She decided to go off gluten for a while and see how it went.  Good news: her health improved almost immediately and she still remarks how much better she feels the longer she goes without it.  Bad news: now she can't partake in the beer I make.  I've looked into some options for gluten-free brewing and may explore that more down the road, provided I can come up with something better than New Grist (not my speed).  Neither of us care for wine, and DeAunn is allergic to sulfites (though the sulfited drinks we've had this summer don't seem to have bothered her, interestingly), so I'm not planning to get into making it right now.

Over the last few months we've sampled a variety of ciders and meads for further GF possibilities, with some great finds.  French perry was a particular hit, as was pretty much the full line of meads, melomels (honey & fruit), and metheglins (honey & herbs/spices) from Brothers Drake Meadery in Columbus, Ohio; their semi-dry varieties in particular really redefined mead for us as a beverage that didn't have to be sticky sweet.  If you find yourself in Columbus, do yourself a favour and stop in at the tasting room.

My eyes will be peeled over the next couple months for local cider to ferment, but honey is something that seems to be available more readily.  There are a few apiaries in the area, so fortunately using local honey is a viable option for us.  Without really planning on it, however, we got our mead making start on the road in July.  While visiting DeAunn's family in Alabama, we had the pleasure of eating peaches from a local farm that were the juiciest and best tasting that either of us had ever had.  With mead on my mind and some of champion mead maker (and BTV guest) Curt Stock's recipes and processes bookmarked, I devised a plan.  We bought a couple baskets of peaches before we left to take with us on our visit to Pennsylvania; there we procured some local honey and, after more searching than I'd anticipated, wine yeast.  Remove the pits and freeze the peaches, add in some yeast energizer, yeast nutrient, and water, and voilà, we were fermenting about a gallon of peach melomel in a bucket in the back

seat of the car as we traveled.  I transferred it to secondary once we got back home and added bentonite to flocc out the proteins and yeast; the sample at transfer was very promising.

It would've been enough to see how this batch turned out and then to move on to further experimenting, but last week a notice came over my Facebook feed about Mead Day on the 4th.  Since it's so easy to make, it took hardly any time at all to pick up all the ingredients for a couple gallons of blackberry melomel.  I'm interested to see how long these take to be drinkable; while conventional wisdom points to months (or years) of aging, Curt's staggered nutrient addition method purportedly turns out ready-to-drink batches in as little as six weeks.  The peach melomel definitely pointed in that direction, but Brothers Drake are turning out really excellent mead following a more traditional aging program.  Extended aging would also play well to experimenting with wood, dry hops, and other possibilities.  If you haven't tried making mead, I'd highly recommend just trying it out by getting together a pound or two of honey, a gallon jug, and a packet of Lalvin Narbonne 71B-1122; it can be a very rewarding addition to your brewing portfolio.

Pennsylbama Peach Melomel

Batch size: 1.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.123 (estimated)

Fermentables
 4 lb Local PA honey
3.75 lb Local AL peaches - pitted, mashed, frozen

Yeast
Lalvin 71B-1122

Extras
Yeast nutrient
Yeast energizer

Staggered nutrient additions (SNA): added yeast, nutrient, and energizer at pitching time, 24 hours, and 48 hours into fermentation

Brewday: 14 July 2012

Secondary: 7 August 2012
Added .5 tsp Bentonite, dissolved
SG: 1.032

Bottled: 29 September 2012
FG: 1.029
ABV: 12.4%

Bottled still.
Great peach aroma, decent peach flavour, finish is sweet but satisfying.

==========

Mead Day 2012 Blackberry Melomel

Batch size: 2 gallons
Measured OG: 25.0P (1.107)

Fermentables
 5 lb Local UT honey
1.25 lb Organic blackberries, frozen

Yeast
 Lalvin 71B-1122

Extras
Yeast nutrient
Yeast energizer

Brewday: 4 August 2012
Fermented in swamp cooler at 71F
Nutrient and energizer added at pitching and 48 hours later

Secondary
Bentonite added, oak added to 1 gallon

Bottled: 27 October 2012
FG: 1.002
ABV: 13.8%
Bottled still.

Tasting: The peach melomel, finishing sweet, reinforced the delicate peach flavour.  Alcohol was present and maybe a little pushy, but just let you know this was a substantial libation.  The blackberry melomel, on the other hand, finished very dry.  The blackberries lent a fruity tartness, with the oaked portion also having an enjoyable tannic drying sensation on the back of the tongue.  Very different, but also very tasty.

The IPA that Would Be a Pale

The Utah Beehive Brewoff is coming up, and it will be the first homebrew competition I’ve entered.  Still making decisions on what I have that’s in shape to submit, I thought a small batch of IPA would keep me in hoppy beer into the fall, age well in primary while we’re out of town, and could potentially make for a good entry.  I’ll have just enough time to give it a short dry hop and carbonate it before submitting my bottles.

I made this the second half of my batch #100 brewday, just before we left Salt Lake; while that beer came out as planned, finishing that batch and the race to finish packing and prepping the house for our departure took its toll on the IPA.  I’d planned to do a 3-gallon batch, but inattention put me into normal-batch mode: I ended up sparging to 6 gallons pre-boil volume and ended up with just under 5 gallons of wort to ferment.  The extra volume meant a reduction in gravity and IBUs; I added a pound of sugar to compensate for the low gravity at knockout, but not wanting to add another hour of boiling to my late hops and lacking the time in my day to do so anyway, I had to leave it at that.

The wort that ended up in the fermenter fell squarely into the American pale ale category; not what I was trying to make, but definitely a better outcome than I should expect from paying so little attention on brewday.  We’ll see at that point if it’s worth submitting.

Dumb Luck Pale
Batch size: 4.8 gallons
Projected OG: 1.052
Projected SRM: 7.0
Projected IBU: 42.2
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 87%

Grains
53.3% - 4 lb Malteurop 2-row
20.0% - 1.5 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
6.7% - 8 oz Crisp Amber
6.7% - 8 oz Briess C40
13.3% - 1 lb Table sugar (0 min)

Hops
.3 oz Columbus (16.7%) (FWH)
.3 oz Summit (17.6%) (60 min)
.3 oz Columbus (10 min)
.3 oz Summit (10 min)
.4 oz Columbus (Dry hop 3 days)
.4 oz Summit (Dry hop 3 days)

Yeast
WY1450/US-05 (slurry)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast energizer (10 min)

Water additions
7 qts RO water (mash)
1 g Gypsum (mash)
2 g Gypsum (boil)

Brewday: 18 June 2012
Mash: 151F for 60 min
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons

Originally supposed to be a 3-gallon batch of IPA, but was too distracted to realize my sparge numbers were way too high
Ferment in swamp cooler at 62F ambient

Dry hops: 4 August 2012

Bottled: 8 August 2012
FG: 1.005
ABV: 6.1%

Bottled with 3.6 oz table sugar.

Tasting: Did not turn out.  Can’t remember if it was infected or simply poorly made, but dumped the whole batch.  Next time I’ll make the beer I intend to make.

Batch #100 - Imperial Raspberry (Blackberry) Vanilla Porter

It's a nice round number in the brew log, 100.  Kicking off the triple digits.  I considered for a good while what that century batch should be.  A barleywine, finally?  Another stab at an IIPA (with all Centennials, of course)?  So many options.  All of my previous quarter-century batches have been big, dark beers--always

cold-weather favourites with me--and in the end, I decided to carry on that tradition with an imperial porter.  To keep it from becoming too ordinary, though, this one's getting vanilla beans, probably oak, and definitely a bunch of raspberries.

Vienna base for malty warmth, a good helping of brown malt for its restrained roast, and some medium-dark crystal and pale chocolate to add a few more layers to this big, rich porter.  This also seemed like the perfect batch in which to use the D-180 syrup I've had lying in wait since last summer, bringing its dark fruit character and helping dry out this hefty beer.  Minimal hopping for balance, and a healthy slurry of neutral ale yeast to ferment.

The big fun will take place when I add the raspberries, vanilla beans, and oak.  Wanting these extra ingredients to make a big impact, there'll be a lot of each going into secondary; if they're too overwhelming, it'll be up to time and patience to bring them into balance.  I'm planning on giving them about a month of contact time,

though it'll be up to the beer to tell me when it's ready.  I may also add these ingredients in stages, particularly getting in the vanilla last so that the secondary fermentation of the raspberries doesn't blow off all the aromatics from the beans.

Wanting to give this beer the summer to ferment and age a bit but running out of time before our summer trip, it became the first half of another double-batch brewday the day before we left town.  Though there was a lot of frenzied activity throughout the house, the wort came out fine.  The real issue is whether or not the fermentation temperatures behaved themselves in my absence over the last couple weeks; activity was just getting started when we left the house, and the best I could do for it was to add some extra ice packs to the swamp cooler to get the initial temperature down.  This is the disadvantage of my low-fi temp regulation setup.  I'm sure it rose above where I'd normally try to keep it, but I have a feeling it won't have gone too far out of hand.  Now I just have to hope it didn't blow off the airlock...

Imperial Raspberry Vanilla Porter
Batch size: 4.6 gallons
Projected OG: 1.089
Projected SRM: 39.0
Projected IBU: 30.5
Boil time: 95 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 65%

Grains/Fermentables
75.4% - 13 lb Vienna
11.6% - 2 lb Brown malt
5.8% - 1 lb C 80
1.4% - 8 oz Pale Chocolate
5.8% - 1 lb D-180 Belgian candi syrup (10 min)

Hops
.7 oz Magnum (13.5%) (85 min)

Yeast
WY1450 Denny’s Favorite 50/US-05 (slurry)

Extras
1 tbsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
7 lb Frozen raspberries (secondary)
3+ vanilla beans, split, scraped & chopped (secondary)
2 oz home-toasted oak, boiled (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
10 qts Distilled water
1 g Baking soda
1 g Chalk

Brewday: 18 June 2012
Mash: 21 qts @ 150F for 60 min
1st sparge: 6 qts @ 212F
2nd sparge: 9 qts @ 212F
Pre-boil volume: 6.5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 15.4P (1.066)

Fermented in swamp cooler, started at 65F ambient

4 August 2012
SG: 1.024

Secondary: 10 August 2012
Added frozen blackberries (in place of original plan of raspberries); will add oak and vanilla beans after fermentation settles down again.
Very full; hopefully fruit fermentation won’t be too vigorous.
Revised est. OG: 1.091

Vanilla: 7 September 2012
Oak: 9 September 2012

Bottled: 8 December 2012
FG: 1.024
ABV: 8.8%
Bottled with 3.7 oz light brown sugar

Tasting: Sweet and winey, though not necessarily in a bad way. The blackberries are the big player here, with the roast really not making a dent in comparison.  The oak and vanilla really don't play a part, either.  This is a beer to enjoy slowly; I expect the batch to last well into next winter.

Flanders Red - Attempt #2

The second beer of my doctoral brewing/aging program is a Flanders red.  It's this style that really sent me down the path of sour beer; while I couldn't stand Duchesse, purportedly a great gateway sour, Rodenbach Grand Cru had me hooked from the first sip.  I've made one attempt at this style before, which, after a year of aging, unfortunately turned out a beer that had a light, pleasant pie-cherry aroma but a very bland taste (the extra gallon of wort fermented with raspberries and with a Ziploc bag in place of an airlock turned out to be far superior).

Given the spectacular failure of that first batch, a few alterations were in order.  The recipe changed, but more significant for this beer, the mash temperature was increased to leave more dextrins for the souring bugs to slowly devour over the next couple years.  Instead of using an oak peg, this batch will get cubes, which should be much more manageable for long term storage.  Avoiding a boneheaded move from last time, I'll also remember to toast the oak before it goes in the beer.  Out of necessity, the primary ferment will last a bit longer; we're on the road for a while, so this batch will have been sitting for about six weeks before being transferred off the the cake to age.  Primary is also happening in a bucket instead of a carboy; though this time will be relatively short in the life of the beer, it might be enough to allow for some extra oxygen pickup through the more permeable (than glass) plastic and encourage some extra acetic souring action.

There was no shortage of yeast that went into this batch.  Since different strains of yeast and bacteria grow at very different rates (with good ol' Saccharomyces usually coming out as the speed demon), making a starter of a yeast blend--in this case Wyeast 3763 Roeselare, originally from Rodenbach--can throw off the delicate balance of bugs and yeast in the packet.  Instead of a starter, two full smack packs went into primary.  As if that weren't enough, though--and it should have been--I also dosed it with the full Brett L yeast cake from my session sour.  Brettanomyces usually grows very slowly, but when used in place of Saccharomyces in primary it ferments much more quickly and cleanly.  In this beer it may hang back and let the Sacch from the Roeselare do the primary fermentation, then join in the funk-imparting process later...or it might do battle for dominance.

Evidence of the latter (or at least that there's just a whole mess of yeast in this batch) came in the form of kraeusen sputtering out the airlock, then the hole in the bucket lid as it filled the one and a half gallons of headspace in the primary with yeasty activity.  Before we left--on day four of primary--it had settled down a bit, and I replaced the stopped-up airlock with a fresh one.  By now, it's probably either blown off the second airlock or has settled down enough that it's out of that danger zone.  The fun will be not knowing until I get back in a few weeks.  This certainly won't be an uninteresting batch, though.

DMA Flanders Red
Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.066
Projected SRM: 14.8
Projected IBU: 13.8
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 88%

Grains
77.2% - 8 lb Malteurop 2-row
9.6% - 1 lb Weyermann Pale Wheat
9.6% - 1 lb Dingemans Cara 45
3.6% - 6 oz Special B

Hops
1 oz Hallertauer (4.3%) (60 min)

Yeast
2 pkgs WY3763 Roeselare Blend (no starter)
WY5526 Brett L (slurry)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast energizer (10 min)
Medium toast oak cubes, home toasted (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
10 qts RO water
1 g Epsom salts
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 15 June 2012
Mash: 158F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 12.8P (1.052)

Ferment in swamp cooler at 65F ambient
Strong activity by next morning

Update: 3 March 2013
Brewed right before leaving town for six weeks during the hottest part of the summer, we returned to find that this one hadn't stayed sealed, and had managed to develop a solid acetobacter infection.  I've left it alone in its fermenting bucket to see how it would develop.  Tried a sample a couple months ago; despite the infection, it's still just a pretty bland, non-funky, underhopped beer, much like my first Flanders was.  It's going to keep sitting around for now, and may stay in that bucket until graduation.  Maybe by then it will funk up and get interesting.

Secondary: 21 September 2013
Samples drawn over the past year haven’t been very impressive.  Needed the fermenter back for bottling, so transferred to several gallon jugs.  One jug got 1 oz bourbon-soaked second-use oak cubes, another got .5 oz, the rest were straight.  Will give it a few more months and see if anything positive develops from it.

Bottled: 12 April 2014
FG: 1.008
ABV: 7.6%
Bottled 4.3 gallons with 3.9 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Tasting: 8 May 2014
Given this beer’s inauspicious start–fermenting at least semi-open for its first three months–it has really developed well beyond my expectations. Nice sharp sourness at the start, vinegar note that’s not overpowering, strong cherry later, and malty, bready finish. A bit thin and watery for a moment in the middle, but I don’t foresee any lack of enjoyment from drinking this beer. Definitely a testament to giving the bugs proper time to develop their signature flavours.

Little Rye Porter Tasting

While I love brewing big beers, I often feel most rewarded by successes with low-gravity batches; it can be a challenge to keep the alcohol low without losing flavour and body.  One option for beers that call for such small amounts of raw materials is to use grains with a lot of character; for me, a base of rye malt can do just the trick.  I've certainly struggled using too high a proportion on larger beers, but rye's spicy, rustic flavour and glutinous mouthfeel can really enhance a beer that could otherwise be thin and lifeless.  With this rye-based brown porter I may have finally found the balanced roastiness I've always sought; it's an integral component, which separates this beer from a brown ale, but without overstepping its bounds into the realm of burnt coffee.

Little Rye Porter

Appearance -Deep, rich brown body with red highlights at the edges, topped with a dense tan head; it definitely lives up to its brown porter designation.

Smell -Very pleasant, rounded roastiness, with bready malt beneath.

Taste - Roast is very present without being overpowering.  It's followed by nicely rough rye bread notes, with a little biscuit hiding beneath.  The roast and rye both make an appearance in the brief finish.

Mouthfeel - Super slick and creamy from the rye, and very full bodied; a feat for a lot of small beers, especially without becoming too sweet (which this isn't).  The carbonation may just a bit high.

Overall - Really pleased with this one; it's my best "smaller" (i.e., not Baltic/imperial) porter to date, especially considering the roast balance.  I'd like to see if I can strike a similar note with a barley base in place of the rye; planning that for the fall.

English Summer Ale Tasting

At this blog's one-year mark a few months ago, I challenged myself to post more tasting notes of my beers.  I've fallen behind on this resolution, but am getting back on track with a couple tastings this week.  First up is my English summer ale; while the WY1028 sent this in a different direction than I'd originally conceived, it's still a very quaffable beer for a hot summer day.

English Summer Ale

Appearance - Pours a billowy head of large bubbles that hangs around for most of the glass.  Slightly hazy, with a warm gold colour.

Smell - Bread and biscuits, with even more emerging as it warms.  Light floral hop notes in the background.

Taste - Lots of mineral character comes forth immediately; strangely, it suggests an almost lager-like quality to me, which has backed off some over the last few weeks.  The wheat comes through in the middle, with qualities of warm bread and crackers.  Some fruitiness comes in near the end, accompanied by more bread.  Mineral lingers.

Mouthfeel - Carbonation may be a touch high for an English style, but it's not bothersome here.  Light to medium-light body.

Overall - It's an intriguing beer, especially for being so light.  I now have a very clear idea what is meant by "mineral" notes deriving from some English yeast.  This is definitely a more appealing wheat style to me than hefeweizen (too banana-clove-bubblegum) and wit (too celery), and more interesting than a lot of American wheats.  This one is probably ready for a rebrew just as it is, though I'd like to try a fruitier English yeast.

"Endangered" Beer: Burton Ale

In the last few weeks, Burton ale has come up in my blog feed not once but twice: first in a post on endangered beers by Martyn Cornell, then again the other day in a writeup specifically on the style by Jeff Alworth.  The components of this old English style, especially for its original iterations, are either impressive or frightening, depending on your point of view: high starting and finishing gravities, with a staggeringly massive bittering charge.  This is a amber-to-dark, heavy beer that balances its substantial residual sweetness with an incredible amount of bitterness.  Certainly not one that encourages (or rewards, presumably) pounding back multiple pints in a sitting.

The first mention of the style I came across was an article in Zymurgy last year, also written by Martyn (along with Antony Hayes).  It came out around when Northern Brewer released its Northern No. 1 limited-edition kit, a stronger interpretation of this style than the recipe in the article.  Since then, I've had a Burton ale on my long-term docket; I've never tried one, and I'm not sure that I'll even like it once I have it.  The thought of creating a beer that needs a year just to become drinkable, though, was too intriguing not to try.

The recipe I used is pretty much straight from Zymurgy; I upped the base malt, inched down the chocolate, and went with domestic grain.  To increase the caramel undertones and make up for efficiency loss, I gave it a 120-minute boil; between the long boil and hop absorption, I'm only expecting about 3 1/2 gallons in the end.  In anticipation of this brew, I've had the half-pound of Kent Goldings hanging out in the back of my beer freezer since January; they went in the pot for the full boil.  Filtering 8 ounces of hops through a funnel strainer is not my idea of fun, and plenty of vegetable material seems to have made it into the carboy anyway.  Everything about this beer is big, including the water additions; the 12 grams of gypsum I added to Burtonize my local water even made the unhopped pre-boil wort taste rough.  I've started rehydrating dry yeast, adding a little yeast energizer to the mix, and my beers have been taking off very quickly; this one started about 2 hours after pitching, then forced me to move to a blowoff tube the next morning.

While this beer is far from making it into the glass, there are a few things I'd change were I to rebrew it.  I'd probably increase my base malt (and switch to an English pale variety like Maris Otter) even more and aim for an even bigger, older version of this style.  The small amount of chocolate malt darkened the wort a lot more than I was expecting; some day I'll stop believing the projected colours Beersmith gives me, as light beers almost always turn out darker than expected and vice-versa.  Next time I'll lower it even more and probably switch to pale chocolate.  I'd also be interested in brewing a recipe more in line with what Martyn describes going into Greene King's Burton Pale Ale in an earlier post, including crystal malt and a couple different caramels and brewing sugars.  For now, though, I'm content to see how this one matures.  I'm just waiting for primary fermentation to finish so I can move it to long-term storage and age it on some oak cubes.  For a freaking year.

Burton Ale

Batch size: 3.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.085
Projected SRM: 14.9
Projected IBU: 186.4
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 54%

Grains
98.8% - 15 lb Malteurop 2-row
1.2% - 3 oz Briess Chocolate

Hops
8 oz EKG (5.4%) (120 min)
2 oz EKG (Dry hop 2 weeks)

Yeast
2 pkgs Windsor dry yeast

Extras
1 tbsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
1 tbsp Irish moss (10 min)
2 oz Oak cubes, home toasted - medium (secondary)

Water profile
SLC

Water additions (mash)
2 qts RO water
12 g Gypsum
7 g Epsom salt
1 g Chalk

Brewday: 5 June 2012
Mash: 20 qts @ 150F for 90 minutes
1st sparge: 8.5 qts @ 200F
2nd sparge: 9 qts @ 180F
Pre-boil volume: 7.4 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 12.9P (1.052)

Much darker than expected; can’t believe so much colour came out of just 3 oz of chocolate
Lots of hop trub seems to have ended up in the fermenter, despite filtering
Fermented in swamp cooler at 65F ambient
Blew off the airlock on day 2; replaced with blowoff tube for a little under a day until it settled down

Secondary: 1 September 2012?
“Re-”oaked: 5 January 2013
Don’t remember when I moved this one, nor can I recall if I actually added the oak at the time.  Not terribly worried about over-oaking this one, I added 3.1 oz oak in January.  Still haven’t tasted it; will wait until the one-year mark to do so.

Phineas & an Ugly, Ugly Brewday

At the end of a recent Brewing TV episode on brewing double IPAs, Kristen England spoke on the difficulty small breweries have obtaining the hottest, sexiest new hops; between small harvests of these new varieties and these breweries being low on the pecking order for the hop quantities needed for commercial-scale

brewing, it seems like it's easier to score the likes of Amarillo, Simcoe, and Citra as a homebrewer than as a widely recognized regional brewery.  As alternatives to the flashy new hops, Kris brought up "back to basics" varieties like Cascade and Brewer's Gold, reminding me that these were the basis for the monuments of craft brewing like SNPA.  It being high time to bring another batch of pale ale into the world--the Short Notice Pale has come and gone already--it felt right to return to the roots of homebrewing by using some tried-and-true hops.

With the late spring heating up, few things would be more welcome here than a hefty supply of easy-drinking hoppy beer.  On hand last summer were the yin-and-yang "session IPAs" Sturm und Drang; they ended up being less sessionable than intended, but certainly did the trick.  So this year why not counterbalance a "traditional" pale with another one that takes advantage of that homebrewer-scale access to all these exotic new varieties?  Taking this theme of opposites attracting in a different direction, I set out to brew ten gallons of wort, hopping one half with old-school hops and the other half with the new wave.

None of my three pots would hold the 13+ gallons of pre-boil wort alone, but the solution was fairly elegant (if not exactly ingenious).  The first and second runnings went into the 9-gallon pot, while the final sparge water--heated in one of the 7.5-gallon pots--was added to the tun.  These runnings were mixed well and evenly split between the two smaller pots; the final runnings also ran to the big pot and were mixed before being split between the other pots again.  The pre-boil gravity ended exactly the same between the two pots.

Everything can't go right for too long, of course; it just wouldn't be right.  Apparently a flaw in the design of my new small-pot windscreen has been exposing the end of the propane line to elevated temperatures while in use, and while heating the final batch of sparge water, the hose finally degraded and started leaking propane, igniting in a magnificent (also frightening) gout of flame outside the safe confines of the turkey fryer.  Fortunately no hellacious propane tank explosion ensued, but an hour and a half of driving around searching for a replacement hose for my (admittedly cheap Chinese) fryer assembly proved fruitless, so onto the slow burn of the electric range went the pots.  To put it charitably, the brewday was extended somewhat by this development.

Past those good times, I also managed to unintentionally leave three different valves open in the brewing process, causing a minor kitchen flood each time.  Two were on the swamp coolers--left open since their last use to air dry--while the other was the mash tun valve, which was open for the same reason.  Fortunately no wort was lost, just a little bit of the strike water.  Still aggravating.  As the final brewday coup de grace, I

crushed one of my floating thermometers while placing a fermenter in its swamp cooler.  As an added bonus, the slurry of WY1450 I pitched in both fermenters didn't seem to be taking off even after a couple days, so I rehydrated my emergency packet of US-05 and pitched it with a fair bit of yeast energizer.  I'm not sure if the new yeast went right to work or if the energizer kicked the old yeast into gear, but fermentation was going strong within a few hours.

Activity has slowed to a crawl, so the dry hops should go in soon.  Provided I don't introduce acetobacter at that point (knocking on wood as I write) I should have several cases of hoppy session beer to last through what's shaping up to be a beautiful summer.  For the record, the name of this batch derives from a character from the book A Separate Peace who delights in all manner of outdoor summer activities.  It's also a badass name in its own right...and just happens to grant these two beers the same initials as a very famous duo of much more high-octane offerings from a renowned West Coast brewery. 

Phineas Summer Pale Ale - split batch

Batch size: 10 gallons
Projected OG: 1.046
Projected SRM: 7.1
Projected IBU: 38.4/38.1
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 85%

Grains
80.0% - 12 lb Malteurop 2-row
13.3% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Munich
6.7% - 1 lb Caramunich II

Hops (per half batch)
.4 oz Nugget (12.4%) (60 min)
.9 oz Hop blend (15 min)
.9 oz Hop blend (0 min - hop stand 30 min)
1.2 oz Hop blend (Dry hop 5 days)

- Phineas the Elder blend - 1:1:1 Centennial Type (9.7%) - Columbus (13.3%) - Nugget (12.4%)
- Phineas the Younger blend - 1:1:1 Amarillo (9.3%) - Citra (13.4%) - Sorachi Ace (12.1%)

Yeast
WY1450 Denny’s Favorite 50 (slurry)

Exras (per half batch)
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)

Water additions
3.5 gal RO water (mash)
1 g Gypsum (mash)
2 g Epsom salts (mash)
1 g CaCl (mash)
1 g Gypsum (per half batch, boil)

Brewday: 12 May 2012
Mash: 151F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 13.6 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.2P (1.037)

Phineas the Younger 
Fermenter volume: 5.2 gallons
OG: 10.6P (1.043)

Phineas the Elder
Fermenter volume: 5 gallons
OG. 11.4P (1.046)

No activity after 42 hours; rehydrated & added US-05 to both fermenters.  Activity after a couple hours; fermenting strongly by the next morning.

Dry hops: 6 June 2012
Transferred PtY to a 5-gal bucket to free up bottling bucket.  Didn’t taste it, but aroma was alarmingly Belgian; no sign of infection, though.  Hopefully it’s just the hops, but will know at bottling in under a week if it’s infected or if somehow I used the wrong yeast.

Bottled: 11 June 2012
Bottled each batch with 4 oz table sugar

Phineas the Younger
FG: 1.008
ABV: 4.6%

Phineas the Elder
FG: 1.010
ABV: 4.7%

The “Belgian” aroma detected at transfer in PtY seems to be hop derived, probably from the Sorachi; the yeast flavour is clean.  Not sure it’s my favourite hop, though it could work very well in a number of Belgian-style beers, especially a saison.

Tasting: PtY never turned out; it gave the distinct aroma of Pine-Sol, with a flavour to match.  PtE was all right during the summer, but fell off by the autumn; entered in a local homebrew contest, it was diagnosed with serious brewing/fermentation flaws.

DMA BDSA

When we decided to go back to school for our doctoral degrees, I thought a great corresponding project would be to brew a few batches of beer that we could age until we finished our dissertation defenses. Considering what would improve over that time, I settled on a quadrupel/Belgian dark strong ale, a barleywine, and a Flanders red.  The plan was to brew them before we started back at school and give them the full three year school years to age.  Of course, we've now finished the first year and I have only just brewed the first of these.  Better late than never, at any rate; the Flanders will hopefully be brewed before we make our summer trip back east so it can start its long, long primary, and the barleywine by early fall.

I go back and forth on Belgian beers; many times the yeast phenolics don't agree with me.  Belgian dark strongs, though, are often a treat; when I come across St. Bernardus Abt 12 on draft (back in Chicago, anyway), there's nothing quite like it.  To allow this very big beer to be as "digestible" as possible, the grist is simple, unclouded by lots of dextrinous malts, and mashed low; to get a maltier quality, the base is Vienna instead of the more traditional pils.  The grist also includes nearly 10% sugar for increased fermentability.  While I've experimented with making my own candi sugar before, I was curious to try some of the commercial dark candi sugar available; some have said that though it's just plain cane sugar (and/or sometimes beet sugar) the flavour can be very different from homemade iterations.  There are a couple pounds of D-180 picked up at NB Milwaukee last summer just waiting to spring into action; one pound is for this beer, while the other is for another upcoming batch.  The rest was originally going to be simple table sugar, but when I found turbinado for a decent price, it seemed right to go with the more characterful choice.

WY3787, purportedly Westmalle's (and Westvleteren's, Achel's, and quite likely St. Bernardus's) yeast, produces some fine Trappist and abbey ales.  I've used it to make a nice dubbel, but the follow-up BDSA did not do as well, sputtering out at 1.050.  Unfortunately I haven't had an aeration system to get the proper amount of oxygen into the wort for big beers like this, which may be a major factor in the yeast failing to finish; I actually just acquired an aeration stone and an inline air filter, but not in time for this most recent batch.  To give the yeast a better chance at finishing out this time, though, I reserved the sugars for incremental additions during primary, along with some yeast energizer to keep the little guys up and moving.

The mash-in for this batch was so large (6 1/2 gallons of liquor) that there was only pre-boil volume enough left for a single batch sparge, as opposed to my normal double.  Thus, there was a significant dropoff in efficiency; next time I'll plan for a larger volume and increase the boil time.  It also took an inordinate amount to lauter, which I wasn't expecting from a mash that included no rye, wheat, or oats to stop up the works.  Coming off a smallish starter, the 3787 got right to work, requiring a blowoff tube in the first couple days.  Fermentation temps have been kept relatively moderate, coming up from the mid 60s into the low 70s only after most of the activity had finished; this should keep phenolic production while still keeping the yeast at work.

At the end of the first week, fermentation had slacked off significantly, so I added the first sugar addition.  The gravity was at 1.030, which doesn't seem too bad in under a week; if it hasn't dropped within a couple weeks of the final sugar addition, I'll get a fighting starter of the very attenuative Wyeast French Saison yeast on the stirplate and see if that will finish the job.

DMA BDSA
Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.101
Projected SRM: 24.2
Projected IBU: 28.6
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 58%

Grains/Fermentables
80.0% - 18 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
9.0% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Munich I
2.2% - 8 oz Dingemans Cara 45
4.4% - 1 lb D-180 Belgian candi syrup (primary)
4.4% - 1 lb Turbinado sugar (primary)

Hops
.7 oz Warrior (16.7%) (60 min)

Yeast
WY3787 Trappist High Gravity (2-qt starter)

Extras
1 tbsp Yeast nutrient

Water additions (mash)
20 qts distilled water
2 g Epsom salts
1 g Salt
1 g CaCl2
1 g Chalk

Brewday: 5 May 2012
Mash: 148F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 5.8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 17.0P (1.070)
Post-boil OG (w/o sugars): 20.2P (1.085)

Ferment started in swamp cooler at 62F ambient
Activity took off in under 12 hours; by 36 hours had to replace the airlock with a blowoff tube

Sugar addition #1: 11 May 2012
8 oz turbinado with yeast energizer (boiled & cooled with enough water to dissolve)
SG: 1.030 - may need 3711 to finish the job
Bumped up temp over the last couple days to a high of 74F ambient as activity slowed.  Fermentation put out ~800 ml of blowoff by that time; replaced blowoff tube with an airlock when activity slowed and gave the fermenter a good spin to rouse the yeast.  Activity took off again, so dropped the temp back into the mid 60s.  Activity was slacking again before the sugar addition.

Sugar addition #2: 15 May 2012
D-180

Sugar addition #3: 20 May 2012
D-180

Sugar addition #4: 25 May 2012
Turbinado with yeast energizer

Secondary: 5 June 2012
SG: 1.022
Pitched rehydrated champagne yeast to encourage the gravity down into the teens, hopefully.

4 August 2012
SG: 1.016

Bottled: 10 August 2012
FG: 1.015
ABV: 11.3%

Bottled with 4.8 oz table sugar.

Tasting: Substantial with lots of fruit.  Belgian yeast character as all get-out, generally complemented by the residual sweetness.  A very decent sipper; I don't know how much will make it all the way to the end of this degree.

2nd Place, Belgian Strong Ale: 2014 Beehive Brew-Off

English Summer Ale

I stacked my brewing docket very ambitiously this winter.  So here we are, halfway through spring, and most of the beers still on it are kind of out of season.  I'm still planning to brew most of them, and several will hopefully be brewed to age over the summer for the next round of cold weather, but it's time to incorporate some more season-appropriate batches into the rotation, ones that are both light and sessionable.  First up, an English summer ale.

My enticement to this style came from the description (and recipes) in Radical Brewing:  "The moment begs for a perfect summer ale - crisp, dry, refreshing, but sturdy enough to satisfy, a citric hop aroma leaping from a dazzling white meringue." (83)  I've never had the pleasure of trying a commercial (or homebrew, for that matter) example of this style, so I used Mosher's description and recipes as a compass.  My aim was for a beer low in gravity with a significant proportion of wheat, hops heavier on aroma than bittering, and a characterful English yeast.

Perhaps perversely for this British-style beer, the grist came entirely from Weyermann.  Glacier hops provide light and (hopefully) neutral bittering.  I really wanted to try Styrian Goldings at the end of the boil, but, as seems to happen every time I want to use this varietal, my LHBS was out.  I subbed Fuggles as an English substitute at knockout with a thirty-minute hopstand; I've learned from my recent Facloner's Flight double IPA not to expect any bittering from this addition (good for this beer, but very unfortunate for the IIPA, which I've had to reclassify as an old ale).  My good friend Ted strongly endorsed the Wyeast 1028 for a yeast with lots of character, so into the fermenter it went.

This was the first beer I brewed since the end of our first year of doctoral study, which ended just a few days before brewday; it was followed by a quadrupel/Belgian dark strong that had been on the longstanding winter "big beer" docket, just to keep everything in balance.  I actually stuck around for the beginning of the boil for once, and thus avoided any nasty boilovers.  After giving the Fuggles a full half hour for the hopstand, I learned that five gallons of boiling liquid will still shed quite a bit of heat in that time; it was already at 110F when I started chilling.  My smack pack of 1028 had already begun inflating (with the inner nutrient pack still intact) when I picked it up at the LHBS; a little online searching let me know that I'd be fine adding the yeast to the fermenter then clipping
open the nutrient pack.  As an added treat, I pulled my reserve bottles of last year's summer beers, Sturm and Drang, to sample while brewing the first of this year's summer beers; while the hop aroma has diminished, they were still pretty damn tasty.
After about twelve hours, the fermenter started going like gangbusters; as it slowed today, I pulled it out of its water bath this morning.  I'll probably jog it every so often and give it a few more days to finish up before bottling.  This should be a fine porch sipper in the next couple months; now I just have to decide what to brew with the big ol' cake of 1028 I'll have.









Summer Ale

Batch size: 5.75 gallons
Projected OG: 1.044
Projected SRM: 5.3
Projected IBU: 22.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 85%

Grains
50.0% - 4 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
25.0% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Munich I
25.0% - 2 lb Weyermann Pale Wheat

Hops
.5 oz Galena (13.2%) (60 min)
1 oz UK Fuggles (4.2%) (0 min - 30-min hop stand)

Yeast
WY1028 London Ale (no starter)

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
8 qts distilled water
1 g Gypsum

Brewday: 5 May 2012
Mash: 152F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 8.7P (1.035)

Started in closet, ~65F ambient; after activity started, moved to water bath at 62F ambient, adjusted down to 58F as activity picked up
Out of the water bath as activity slowed to finish

Bottled: 15 May 2012
FG: 1.010
ABV: 4.4%
1 gallon in cubitainer as “cask ale”; bottled remaining 4 gallons
Bottled cubitainer with .2 oz table sugar; rest with 4.1 oz table sugar

Tasting notes: Mineral notes are interesting, but may be an even better beer with a more fruit-oriented English yeast.