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.