Munich Dunkel

I still remember my first experiences with lager.  The very first was a sip of my dad's Old Milwaukee when I was eight; I can't say it agreed with me.  In college in Boston, Sam Adams frequently showed up at parties, and while it was one of my first welcome introductions to craft beer, I can't say I was really taken with it.  And at the tender age of twenty one, I was offered my first Bud by the drummer of a band for whom I was working merch; the fact that it had about the same taste as a glass of water did not make a great impression.  Following experiences like this, my initial homebrewing instinct was to stick to ales; they were by far what I preferred to drink.  While I've had a few decent craft lagers over the years, I was never swayed to try making one myself.

That was, until I spent a week in Santiago, Chile last October.  Chilean beer is currently experiencing a craft renaissance, but the traditional beers of the country (and many other South American countries) are German lagers.  I had a number of really exceptional lagers while there, but the one that really nailed it for me is the one pictured here: deeply malty and supremely drinkable.  It wasn't too hard a sell sitting in an outdoor cafe in downtown Santiago, enjoying the Southern Hemisphere's early spring weather.  Unfortunately, I can't remember the brewery that produced it, so I couldn't look into it further.  But it was the beer that finally inspired me to really give lager a shot at home.

Lacking a lot of lager knowledge, I couldn't decide if the beer from my memories of Chile was a Vienna lager or a Munich dunkel.  Digging on darker beers for the winter months, I decided to follow the road to München.  (Looks like the inspiration is more a Vienna, though; that may be the next up, then.)  Nearly entirely Munich malt, with just a pinch of dehusked Carafa for deeper colour.  A very light brush of neutral bittering hops, with Hallertauer to finish.  Not knowing my lager yeasts, Wyeast's Munich Lager strain seemed like an easy go-to for the style; building a proper starter took some time, but was well worth it to have a good pitch of yeast.

Brewday went smoothly, leaving my only other big worry being my ability to actually lager, which I did in my swamp cooler with water along with a bunch of ice and ice packs.  I was shocked when I realized I'd made it a full month keeping the beer at a fairly constant low- to mid-30s F with this method.  While it's not perfect--I could stand even more malt character--this could be the start of a long, positive relationship of lager in my homebrewery.

Primavera en Santiago - Munich Dunkel

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.059
Projected SRM: 13.8
Projected IBU: 25.4
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 87%

Grains
98.8% - 10 lb Weyermann Organic Munich
1.2% - 2 oz Carafa Special II

Hops
.3 oz Magnum (13.5%) (60 min)
2 oz Hallertauer (3.9%) (15 min)

Yeast

WY2308 Munich Lager - 4l, 3-stage starter on stirplate

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

Water additions (mash)
3 gal distilled water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Salt

Brewday: 21 September 2013 
Mash: 152F for 60 minutes.
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 12P (1.048)

Fermented in swamp cooler at 50F.

24 September 2013: Definite smell of active fermentation.  No sulphur yet, just yeast churning away.  Give it two weeks, then pull from swamp cooler for diacetyl rest.

9 October 2013: Diacetyl rest at ambient (65-70F).

16 October 2013: Lagered with ice bath in swamp cooler for 4 weeks.
FG:1.016
ABV: 5.6%

Bottled: 21 November 2013
Warmed to room temperature for several days before bottling.
Bottled with 4.1 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Wet-Hopped Ordinary Bitter

I feel lucky to have next-door neighbours who are avid beer drinkers, particularly living where we do.  The husband prefers his tipple light and balanced, while the wife likes hers all over the map, strength and style wise.  They've reacted very enthusiastically to everything I've shared with them, and have returned in kind with some of their local commercial favourites.  This summer they generously volunteered to water my hop bines in our long absence.  I was able to give the hops one pruning before we left; I wasn't going to further burden friends who were already doing me such a big favour.

Upon returning to town, we found the hops in prime shape, ready to be picked.  The thing was, I couldn't tell what was what; the three separate plants had spent the summer growing up and out, tangling together inextricably.  That's what happens, obviously, when you're not on hand to continually prune and sort out the bines as they grow; I just wasn't expecting this level of entanglement, as last year they weren't too tough to separate.  I'd planned on doing an ordinary bitter with the wet Goldings and Willamettes, but since it was impossible to separate them from the Centennials, DeAunn and I picked them all together and into the brewpot they went.

With the success of the ultra-simple recipe for this summer's best bitter, I went much the same route with this English-style beer.  All Maris Otter base, with under a pound of British crystal for residual sweetness.  A little bit of UK bittering hops at the start of the boil, then all those fresh, wet hops at the end.  It's always enjoyable to see all of those green cones swimming in the kettle.  Last year's dry Willamettes went in for dry hop.

Starting so small, this bitter didn't take long to ferment, and I was pouring it under a month from brewday.  This turned out to be another reminder of why I should brew more session beers: the first glass begs for the next, and at 3.3% that doesn't become a problem.  It turned out maybe a little drier that I would've liked, so I'll increase the crystal or raise the mash temp a couple degrees next time.  I can't complain about the drinkability, though, with a bit of crackery malt meshing well with the slight mineral flavour from the yeast.  The one letdown was the lack of hop presence; the bittering is nicely balanced, but for all of that vegetable matter that went in late, there's not a lot going on in the nose.  That being said, it's an exceptionally fine, restrained beer that I've pretty much decimated by this point.  And I got the reaction I'd hoped to receive from my neighbours; while they're always appreciative, this beer went over VERY well, especially with the husband.  I won't lie: it's nice to hit the bullseye.

Wet Hop ‘13 - Ordinary bitter with all the hops straight off the bines

Batch size: 6 gallons
Projected OG: 1.036
Projected SRM: 7.5
Projected IBU: 30.8
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 85%

Grains
90.3% - 6 lb Maris Otter
9.7% - 12 oz British medium crystal

Hops
.5 oz Phoenix (10.2%) (60 min)
11.1 oz Wet homegrown 2013 hops (Willamette/Centennial/Goldings) (10 min)
4.7 oz Homegown 2012 Willamette (dry hop - 10 days)

Yeast
WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale - 1 qt starter on stirplate

Extras

Irish moss (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
10 qts RO water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Baking soda
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 25 August 2013
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 7.2P (1.029)

Fermented in swamp cooler; started at 65F, rose to 67F.

28 August 2013: Visible (via airlock) fermentation complete; removed from swamp cooler & left at ambient temp (~70F) to finish.  Krausen still present the next day; agitated fermenter to encourage flocculation.

Dry hop: 2 September 2013
Took some work to get the whole-cone hops wetted and working on submerged.  Sample I snuck tasted excellent.

Bottled: 12 September 2013
FG: 1.010
ABV: 3.3%

Bottled with 3.2 oz table sugar.

Kölsch

My first experience attempting to brew a kölsch was within my first couple years of homebrewing, when I didn't necessarily have a solid handle on process, and definitely not on fermentation temperatures.  I produced two small batches, about two gallons each; one was mostly pils, the other principally Global kölsch malt.  Giving them too little attention during fermentation and my faux-lagering phase (sitting on a bag of ice for a couple weeks), neither ended up being drinkable.  It was a lesson in paying attention to the beer as it ferments, providing the yeast with a suitably temperate environment, and a number of other brewing issues.  While I wanted to have another go at this singular German ale, interest in brewing other styles and wariness about having a setup to ferment and lager at proper temperatures for the yeast kept me from pulling the trigger.  Years passed.

At long last, the proper confluence of events took place, thanks to my dad's new brewhouse: the starter was finished out and the yeast washed, the grist and proper fermentation temp control were in place, and the fermenters were cleaned and at the ready.  It was finally time again to brew a kölsch, but to do it RIGHT this time, dammit.  Long had I anticipated this day.

A very simple grist, a bit more pils than Vienna, and a single noble hop addition at the start of the boil were all

that went into this wort (along with a couple Whirlfloc tablets).  My dad's ample fridge room easily allowed for the fermentation temp to be kept in the mid 50s for primary.  That same setup permitted this beer to receive a proper lagering as well.

The only unfortunate part to this story is that I won't taste the final product; packaging day came after we headed back to Utah.  It should've been just last week, in fact, if everything went well.  I'll certainly look forward to hearing about how it came out, however; with further experience brewing and much more high-tech fermentation management, I certainly hope this version comes out better than my initial attempt.

Kölsch

Batch size: 12 gallons
Projected OG: 1.046
Projected SRM: 4.2
Projected IBU: 22.0
Boil time: 90 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 73%

Grains
61.5% - 12.75 lb Weyerman Pils
38.5% - 8 lb Weyermann Vienna

Hops
3 oz Hallertauer (4.3%) (90 min)

Yeast
WLP029 German Ale/Kölsch (3.5 gal regular starter)

Extras
2 tablets Whirlfloc (10 min)

Brewday: 13 July 2013
Mash: 150F for 90 minutes
Mashout @ 168F
Fly sparge
Pre-boil volume: 14.5 gallons

Fermented at 55F ambient for 2 weeks, then allowed to free rise to mid 70s ambient for diacetyl rest.
Lagered for 4-6 weeks in low-mid 30s F.

Best Bitter

Most of the batches my dad and I brewed this summer were ten to thirteen gallons, much larger than my normal five- to six-gallon scale.  Between the much bigger grain bills involved in these high-volume batches, the frequency with which we brewed (often once a week), and the distance to the local homebrew shop, it's only reasonable that my dad keeps a few bags worth of base grains on hand.  In this sea of malt, though, even significant amounts of a particular grain can be overlooked at times.

Such was the case with an eighteen-pound portion of Maris Otter a few months ago.  It had been meant for a stout, I believe, but my father had missed the bag of Maris sitting among all the other grains, using an American pale malt instead.  So we were left to devise a recipe to properly exploit this fine English malt.  My thoughts went right to bitters.

Adding just a pound of lighter German caramel malt (antithetical for a British ale, I know) in place of the amber malt I couldn't procure, I angled to create a best bitter.  Northern Brewer for bittering hops, Bramling Cross for flavour, and Goldings for aroma, without a dry hop; we kept it simple. Working with dry yeast also kept the process from getting complex, saving us from having to grow up a large pitch a liquid strain before setting it to work on this middleweight wort.

Efficiency was higher than expected, and we ended up with a slightly bigger beer than intended.  After a few weeks of age, though, it really melded well, combining bready, slightly crusty malt backbone with a subtle kiss of hops.  Once we got going on it, this one didn't last long.  I foresee a return to more balanced, sessionable beers in the coming months.

Best Bitter

Batch size: 12 gallons
Projected OG: 1.051
Projected SRM: 5.2
Projected IBU: 24.4
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 85%

Grains
94.7% - 18 lb Muntons Maris Otter
5.3% - 1 lb Weyermann Carared

Hops
1 oz Northern Brewer (9.6%) (60 min)
1 oz Bramling Cross (7.4%) (20 min)
1 oz Goldings (5.8%) (10 min)

Yeast
2 pkgs Nottingham, rehydrated

Extras
2 tablets Whirlfloc (15 min)

Brewday: 1 July 2013
Mash: 152F for 60 minutes
Mash pH: 5.96 - 2 ml Lactic acid added
Mashout @ 168F
Fly sparge
Pre-boil volume: 14.75 gallons

Fermented at 62F ambient.

Bottled: 12 July 2013
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.1%
3 gallons bottled with 1.6 oz table sugar; remainder kegged.
Cold, uncarbed sample was a bit watery, but had a nice grainy/bready finish.

GF Oatmeal Stout - Fail

In the continuing saga to provide the best in gluten-free fermented beverages for my bride, I'd long planned to try my hand at brewing her a beer with alternative grains; I still have the oats I toasted for that project, though they're probably getting stale at this point.  With an abundance of time, materials, and fermenter space this summer, though, it made for a perfect time to experiment with gluten-free brewing.

Given DeAunn's preference for roast over hops, an oatmeal stout was an excellent pilot brew.  Oats themselves are a gluten-free grain; my understanding, though, is that they're often processed on equipment that also handles grains with gluten, making them unsuitable for those with Celiac disease unless clearly marked as GF.  Since DeAunn just has a sensitivity to gluten and not full-blown Celiac, regular oats would probably be fine.  I roasted a pound of rolled oats the day before brewing; however I was unwilling to completely fill my parents' beautiful new home with smoke and the stench of burning grain, so they came out without quite as much colour as I would've liked ideally.  Normally I'd give the roasted grain a couple weeks to mellow before using them; in this case, I put the roasted oats in a bowl that I swirled and agitated often that day to get out as much of the overboard bitter flavours as possible.

The homebrew shop my dad frequents, Scotzin Bros. in Lemoyne, carries an impressive array of small-batch gluten-free malted grains, including millet, amaranth, teff, and more.  For this first GF outing, though, I tried to play it safe, basing the recipe around sorghum extract and brown rice syrup.  Having given many of the GF beers on the market a try in the last year, DeAunn and I had both decided the tang associated with using a

high percentage of sorghum was not really to our taste.  Unsure of how to best treat other grains for this beer, though, I went with the devil I knew, relying on the other ingredients, such as the roasted oats, dark candi syrup, coffee, and vanilla bean, to counterbalance the sorghum.

By the end of brewday, though, we were left with a carboy full of opaque, almost latte-coloured liquid that only fermented down to about 1.020 over the next couple weeks.  Having started at 1.062, that's pretty sweet.  The taste was very twangy, much as I'd expect of a sorghum-based beer.  In the end it seemed like it would be a waste of good coffee and vanilla to add them to this batch; the pound of D-180 hadn't really helped much to darken it or improve the flavour.  With heavy heart, this batch went down the drain, a failed first GF experiment.  Fortunately, a followup brew of a similar nature by my dad later in the summer turned out much better; it still has a distinct sorghum flavour to me, but DeAunn's really enjoying it.  It inspires me to continue exploring GF brewing.

GF Oatmeal Stout (extract w/ grains)

Batch size: 4.8 gallons
Projected OG: 1.062
Projected SRM:
Projected IBU: 23.0
Boil time: 30 minutes

Grains/Fermentables
36.7% - 3 lb 15 oz Brown Rice Syrup
30.7% - 3 lb 4.8 oz Sorghum Syrup
9.3% - 1 lb Rolled oats
9.3% - 1 lb Rolled oats, roasted to brown malt
9.3% - 1 lb D-180 Dark candi syrup (3 days into primary)
4.7% - 8 oz  Lactose

Hops
1 oz Centennial (8.7%) (30 min)

Yeast
1 pkg Nottingham

Extras
2-3 Vanilla beans, cut & scraped (end of fermentation)
Cold press coffee (bottling)

Brewday: 14 June 2013
Post-boil OG (w/o sugar): 1.056
Not very stout looking; very milky, yeast coloured.

21 June 2013
Added D-180 syrup
Active fermentation has slowed considerably

Ended very twangy, not really close to traditional beer, and not very tasty in general (to me).  Dumped.

Brown Rye (starter beer)

As I wrote about recently, I brewed a lot of beer with my dad this summer on his beautiful new all-electric setup.  He's been trying out a number of recipes in different styles he's found online--a frequent starting point for me as well--as well as working on scaled-up AG versions of beers I designed when he was doing small extract batches in my folks' former home.  Over the summer we'd trade off between us on the brew planning.  Having sought to finally brew a kölsch for some time--most recently this spring--that was my first choice.  Brewing such large volumes (11-12 gallons) and not having a stirplate on hand at the time (my dad built a nice one soon after this) meant that before the main brew must come a starter beer.

As it happened, my dad had a big Belgian/Trappist-style beer planned and needed to propagate yeast for that as well, so we brewed six and a half gallons of low-gravity wort to split between the two yeasts.  In some sense it was also a cleanup beer, finishing up some odds-and-ends grains in the brewery.  However the main malts, Munich and rye, I chose very intentionally, aiming to get a lot of richness out of this smaller beer.  Coincidentally this ended up encompassing long-term plans I've had to brew a Belgian rye table beer.  My original aim was for a red colour, but it ended up solidly brown.  Out of the two beers produced, I prefer the Belgian iteration, the kölsch yeast characteristics not really meshing well with the strong malt flavours.  In the end, though, we had large yeast pitches for both big brews and a couple interesting experimental beers to try.

Brown Rye - Kölsch/Trappist starter
Batch size: 6.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.042
Projected SRM: 13.7
Projected IBU: 18.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 77%

Grains

64.2% - 6.5 lb Weyermann Munich Type 2
24.7% - 2.5 lb Briess Rye
4.8% - 8 oz Crystal 120
4.8% - 8 oz Dingemans Biscuit
2.5% - 4 oz Briess Victory
1.2% - 2 oz Dingemans Chocolate

Hops
1 oz Hallertau (4.3%) (60 min)
1 oz Hersbrucker (4.3%) (15 min)

Yeast
3.5 gal - 2 vials WLP029 German Ale/Kölsch
3 gal - 2 vials WLP500 Trappist Ale

Extras
1.5 tsp Irish moss (10 min)

Brewday: 7 June 2013
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
Mash pH: 5.2
Mashout @ 168F
Fly sparge
Pre-boil volume: 9.5 gallons

WLP029 fermented at 60F ambient.
WLP500 fermented at 68F ambient.
Following fermentation, both crash cooled at 41F.

Bottling: 23 June 2013
WLP029 FG: 1.019 @ 50F - 1.018
ABV: 3.1%
WLP500 FG: 1.0??

Both bottled cold with sugar and rehydrated US-05 added.
Each bottled with 2.5 oz table sugar and rehydrated US-05.

Brett Love I

While it probably won't replace hops as the signature ingredient of American craft beer, Brettanomyces funk has come into its own as a popular brewing component in the last couple years.  This is the first in a planned series of all-Brett beers.  The inspiration for this one was Russian River's Consecration; a big, dark beer that will get fruit and oak made for a good choice to spend the summer maturing on a pitch of Brettanomyces.

My first choice for the yeast strain was Wyeast's Brett Lambicus, known for its pie cherry qualities.  Unable to get it in time for the brewday, I decided to mess with the tropical fruit character of White Labs' Brett Brux Trois.  As in the past, I included a short period of sour worting before the boil to lower the pH and thus encourage the yeast to move toward the funky side during fermentation (though I'm getting to the point with the process that I may try acid malt or adding lactic acid instead in the future; they'd be a lot less labour intensive ways and could get close to the same result).  Also to push for more funk, this batch saw no temperature control; ambient temp was pretty reasonable when we left town, and as the summer progresses, the higher temps may coax more interesting (or possibly terrible) compounds out of the fermentation process.  We'll find out what magic took place in about a month.

Brett Love I

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.092
Projected SRM: 16.8
Projected IBU: 23.2
Boil time: 90 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 81%

Grains/Fermentables
41.2% - 7 lb Malteurop 2-row
29.4% - 5 lb Weyermann Pils
11.8% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
8.8% - 1.5 lb Dingemans Aromatic
2.9% - 8 oz Weyermann Caramunich II
5.9% - 1 lb D-90 syrup (end of primary)

Hops
.6 oz Magnum (14.6%) (90 min)

Yeast
Lacto starter
WY5526 Brett Lambicus - yeast cake
WLP644 Brettanomyces Bruxellensis Trois - 2-qt starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)                   
1 lb Dried currants (end of primary)
8 fl oz Cherry concentrate (end of primary)
1 oz Bourbon-soaked 2nd-use oak cubes (end of primary)

Water additions (mash)
3 gal RO water
1 g Gypsum

Brewday: 22 May 2013
Mash: 156F for 60 minutes.
Pre-sour SG: 15P (1.061)

Sour worted for 7.5 hours.
Post-boil OG (w/o D-90 syrup): 20.6P (1.086)
Started at 63F ambient; left to ferment at summer ambient temps (probably 80F+) for 3 months.

End of primary: 19 August 2013
SG: 9.4P (measured) - corrected 1.007
Added D-90 syrup, currants (rinsed in Star San to remove oils), and oak.
Should’ve moved to a 5-gal secondary & racked on top to be able to reuse the big carboy and avoid oxidizing, but oh well.

2 September 2013: Restart of fermentation has been slow, but today there’s been a lot more airlock activity.  At this point the currants have swelled and are floating.

Bottled: 12 October 2013
FG: 1.013
ABV: 10.4%

Bottled with 5 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Centennial Pils Pale

Kölsch is a style, as my good friend Ted has commented before, that can go by the wayside in the homebrewery.  For me, the lagering time required means that by the time I usually start thinking about having one around I'm already weeks or months behind the eight ball.  Add in a lack of a proper lagering setup that greatly increases the difficulty of doing right by this beer as the temperature rises in spring and summer, and pretty soon the whole plan is a wash.  This year, though, I made plans well in advance to finally brew one near the end of the school year for summer quaffing.  The grains and hops were collected, and I put together everything for a starter of Charlie P's Cry Havoc (on Ted's recommendation).

And then the last two months of the school year came on like a storm of hellfire.  It finally abated at the beginning of May, but summer travel plans loomed ever closer, leaving no time for lagering and scarcely time enough for fermentation.  How does the saying go about the best laid plans? So, like any good homebrewer or icebreaker captain, I altered course.  I reserved some of the Vienna I had for the next brewday and added in some Munich to up the maltiness and colour a bit, and swapped the Hallertaus for Centennials, shooting for a Two-Hearted Ale hop character.  So we have an American pale ale with a German malt bill.  An increase in the boil time should have removed the DMS precursors in the pils, keeping anything untoward from forming during the hop stand.  Leaving off dry hopping made it very feasible to have this beer in the bottle comfortably ahead of our trip.  I had my first of these just a few days ago; it's crisp, bready, bitter, and doesn't betray my original intentions for it to be an entirely different beer.

Centennial Pils Pale

Batch size: 5.1 gallons
Projected OG: 1.050
Projected SRM: 3.9
Projected IBU: 28.6
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 81%

Grains
58.8% - 5 lb Weyermann Pils
23.5% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Munich Type 2
17.7% - 1.5 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna

Hops
.5 oz Centennial (8.7%) (120 min)
1.5 oz Centennial (10 min)
1 oz Centennial (0 min - 30-min whirlpool/hop stand)

Yeast
WLP862 Cry Havoc - 2.5 l starter (made 14 April 2013)

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

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

Brewday: 4 May 2013
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.6P (1.038)

Bottled: 16 May 2013
FG: 1.010
ABV: 5.0%

Bottled with 4.4 oz table sugar.

Small Cherry Melomel

Looking ahead to summer weather and travel plans, I wanted to make something for DeAunn that a) would be ready relatively quickly and b) would be of an alcohol level that would allow her to have more than a few ounces in a sitting.  I combined a smaller amount of honey with the remainder of the bottle of cherry concentrate from the session sour, and voilà: a "sessionable" melomel that should be ready to clarify and bottle after a few weeks.

Having never even tried a mead of this gravity, I'm not sure what to expect.  I kept the ferm temp low, even with the wine yeast, to minimize fermentation byproducts (off-flavours) the yeast would have to spend a lot of time cleaning up or that would require a lot of aging to mellow.  This will get Bentonite in the next couple days; looking forward to trying the sample, hoping it's not overly watery.

Tomorrow will be my first beer brewday in quite some time, following the close of the school semester this week and appropriately on National Homebrew Day and (hip-dorkily) Star Wars Day.  Though my plans for a kölsch have been thwarted by a lack of lagering time before we head back east, I have a backup strategy.  More on that soon.

Small Cherry Melomel

OG: 13.8P (1.056)
Volume: 2 gallons

Fermentables
2.5 lb Cox Honeyland Honey
8 oz Stanton Orchards Montmorency Tart Cherry Concentrate

Yeast
1 pkg Lalvin 71B-1122

Extras (beginning of primary)
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 tsp Yeast Energizer

Brewday: 13 April 2013
Fermented at 55F ambient.

SNA at 24 hours into active fermentation (1 tsp each yeast nutrient & energizer).

18 April 2013: Visible fermentation has ceased; krauesen has dropped.  Moved to 60F+ ambient to finish up.

Secondary: 3 May 2013
FG: 1.002
ABV: 7.0%
Bentonite added.

Bottled: 15 May 2013
Very thin and insipid, lacking in honey and fruit character.  Bottled still, backsweetened with 8 tbsp honey in solution.

Blast from the Past Tasting - Wheatwine

I was rooting around my collection of bombers set aside for long-term aging at some point last month, and decided to finally dump a couple that just hadn't turned out.  Among them was the wheatwine I brewed shortly after starting this blog; it had finished thick and never managed to carbonate, and I dumped the batch before we moved from Chicago.  Upon applying the opener to the cap, however, I was met with--miracle of miracles--a surprisingly forceful hiss.  This bomber, the final remnant of the batch nearly two years old at that point, had actually carbonated!  My best guess is that the Brett from the Wyeast Old Ale Blend I used hung around and did the work over time.  It gives me faint hope for my all-rye Scotch ale experiment disaster.  I was so pleasantly surprised that I poured a taster and recapped the bottle for a later tasting.

It's a good thing I took notes from that taster.  That small glass was exactly the right amount of this beer.  I finally reopened the bottle last week, finding it still adequately carbonated; however, a full glass turned out to be just too overwhelming, and since most of it had been poured, I ended up dumping it.  The body was just way too thick for consuming in quantity; because of this, I'd consider this batch a candidate for bottling in--no joke--mini 1-fl oz bottles.  Truly, a dab'll do ya; that first taster I had was just right.  Without further ado, here are my notes from that tasting.

Wheatwine

Appearance - Deep orange-amber with a mix of fine and coarse bubbles.  Interesting to watch rising bubbles really struggle through the viscosity of the beer.

Smell - Sweet, dark candy and caramel.  Deep maltiness.

Taste - Sweet from residual sugar (1.028 SG at bottling); not a lot of wheat and/or bread character.  Alcohol very present, but not hot or solventy.  Bittersweet finish.

Mouthfeel -Very thick; carbonation is low to medium.  I'm just glad it carbed at all!

Overall - More than many other beers I've brewed, this one is a real experience in a glass.  More than a taster is too much to deal with; just that much, though, gives you a window into something very out of the ordinary.  As intrigued as I am, I don't think it encourages me to run out to try a tall glass of a commercial example, let alone brew five more gallons of my own.

Session Sour II

After the success of the first session sour last year, a couple friends of ours commissioned a second batch.  Given how much I enjoyed this bracing sour cherry beer myself, I was happy to oblige.  The recipe is essentially the same, just scaled up to a six-gallon batch.  I'd considered adding a couple packs of organic frozen cherries to supplement the concentrate, but when the time came I just upped the concentrate amount.  More cherry flavour?  Oh darn.

There were a couple slight process changes.  After doing more research on Brett in primary, and considering the larger batch size this time, I made a starter for my Wyeast Brett L pack.  Due to our busy schedules, the mash unintentionally sat doing its thing for nearly a full day; while the aroma coming from the mashtun had started to take on a bit of "stank," the wort tasted fine and the smell dissipated with the sparge and cleaning afterward.  In addition, the sour worting

stretched out to a full day and a half for this pass.  Again, this wasn't the original plan, but just how it worked out.  The bottles will tell for sure, but I hope that the lacto sourness won't be too much for the beer.  On a positive note, the boil didn't have any of the overfoaming issues I've had on sour worted batches in the past.

As one of our friends is moving at the end of May, this will be bottled earlier than I'd prefer; as you can see in the photo below, it's just begun to grow a fine, cruddy pellicle.  No use crying over spilled beer, though; I'm currently thinking on what I'd like to put on top of the Brett cake to develop some cherry pie funk over the summer.

Session Sour II - rebrew for Gabe & Larry

Batch size: 6 gallons
Projected OG (w/o cherry): 1.041
Projected SRM: 12.3
Projected IBU: 4.7
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 91%

Grains
80.0% - 7 lb Malteurop 2-row
13.3% - 1 lb Aromatic
6.7% - 8 oz Special B

Hops
.3 oz Willamette (4.7%) (60 min)

Yeast

1 qt Lacto starter
3.5 l starter WY5526 Brettanomyces Lambicus (stirplate) (10 days ahead - 7 ferment/3 crash)
    -both started 3 Feb 2013

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
16 24 fl oz Montmorency cherry concentrate (post primary fermentation)
1.25 lb Organic whole frozen cherries with pits (post primary fermentation) Not this time

Water additions (mash)
5 qts RO water

Brewday: 17 February 2013
Mash: 9 qts @ 156F for 20 hours! Top started to scum over and get stinky, but wort was still worty sweet.  Temp dropped to 83F over that time.
1st sparge: 10 qts @ 212F
2nd sparge: 10 qts @ 212F
3rd sparge: 4 qts @ 212F
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons

Brett starter took several days to show activity, but it eventually got going.  Crash cooled for about a week before brewing.

Cooled runnings to 112F & pitched lacto starter.  Plastic wrap over the wort.  Kept warm for 37.5 hours, then boiled as usual.

Fermented at 63F ambient.

9 March 2013: 24 fl oz cherry concentrate added, fermenter agitated.  Considering 25 lbs fruit per bottle, recalculated OG is 1.058

9 April 2013: Has developed a nice thin pellicle over the last few days.

2 September 2013: Transferred to secondary (5-gal carboy & 1-gal jug, actually) before leaving for the summer. Respectable pellicle has formed in each. Looking to bottle within the month.

Bottled: 12 October 2013
FG: 1.010
ABV: 6.3%

Sample was excellent: tangy sourness, with big, juicy fruit unfolding in the finish.  Probably even better than the first batch.
Bottled with 5.1 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Cherry Cyser

School has yet to let up--in fact, the pace is quickening with final projects and exams approaching in the next couple weeks--but it's beyond time to post about the current state of fermentation in the house.  DeAunn's running perilously low on mead and cider; she's finished everything we brought back from our time in Oregon and San Fran last month, about which I'll write soon over at the Nonic blog.  Fortunately, this little batch has been aging away in the corner for better than three months now, which, following my personal mead timeline to date, means it's about time to get it in a snifter (albeit a small, sampler sized one).  Down the road, I'd like to give my meads a year or more to mellow, especially in a barrel, but for now they've been turning out very nicely on a more compressed schedule following Curt Stock's SNA recommendations.

DeAunn's enjoyed getting to know the worlds of cider and mead, and in general her preferences land on the semi-dry side of both.  My first cyser finished a little drier than intended but was a big hit.  The present batch adds in another of her favourites, cherries.  While normally I aim for a larger volume of fruit, I'm counting on the (again, for me) extended contact time, especially with the pits, to add more character.  I'm hoping to bottle this soon--later today, if time and my pile of homework conspire to allow it--so I should have more information on how it's turned out in the near future.

Cherry Cyser
Projected OG: 1.113
Volume: 2 gallons

Fermentables
1 gallon Big B's Organic Cider
5 lb Cox Honeyland Honey
20 oz Organic frozen cherries

Yeast
WLP775 English Cider

Extras (boil)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
1 tsp Yeast energizer (10 min)

Brewday: 3 January 2013
Fermented at 60F ambient.
SNA added at 24 hours - 1 tsp each yeast nutrient and yeast energizer

State of the Brew 2013

With the end of March approaching, this post is nearly two months late; it's been busy 'round these parts.  As you can tell from my general posting output this year, I've been brewing less, due to scarcer time and funds available for the hobby.  School and a range of activities outside brewing have kept me more than a little preoccupied over the past twelve months.  I'm not planning to get out of it; this is just a period of zymurgical slowdown for me.  Fortunately, a spell of late-winter illness has given me some downtime to finally return to the blog.  Even at this late date, wrapping up the year still seemed like a good idea: it helps me reflect on what I've accomplished, what I'd like to improve, and how I'd like to plan my resources for what comes next.  Without further ado, then, here's a little statistical rundown for (mostly) 2012.

Total posts: 21
Total beers brewed: 16

Original Gravity
0.0% - 0 small beers (<1.040)
62.5% - 10 low gravity (1.040-1.055)
12.5% - 2 medium gravity (1.056-1.070)
25.0% - 4 high gravity (>1.070)

A solid trend here for sessionable (if not always textbook "session") beers, though nothing at the very bottom of the scale.  Given the small number of brewdays for the year, turning out just a few big beers ended up constituting a significant portion of my overall output.

Colour
12.5% - 2 pale (<7 SRM)
62.5% - 10 amber (7-17 SRM)
25.0% - 4 dark (>17 SRM)

Nothing surprising here; I find it pretty easy to brew right in the middle of the colour scale, from amber to brown.  I'm happy I managed to fit in a couple of pale beers; I have plans to work more at this end of things, trying a few more stripped-down, possibly historically-inspired beers in the coming year that may consist solely of pale malt.

National style
50.0% - 8 American
37.5% - 6 English
12.5% - 2 Belgian
0.0% - 0 German

Lots of pale ales and IPAs this year, often with pretty neutral American yeasts. It certainly didn't feel like I'd made so many of them, though that's probably directly related to my success rate below.  Still questing after a fine bitter recipe of my own, which contributes significantly to my English output.

Dominant character
37.5% - 6 hoppy
12.5% - 2 malty
12.5% - 2 roasty
12.5% - 2 balanced
12.5% - 2 yeast-derived
6.25% - 1 sour
6.25% - 1 fruit

Yup, lots of pale ales/IPAs.  But a good mix of other flavours running through the mix this year; I do like variety.

Brew support
100% solo brewed

While I had visitors stop in during brewdays from time to time, it's been lots of concentrated brew time for me.  While I really dig my LHBS here, I haven't met up with any local like-minded brewers with whom I've been inclined to share a wort production event yet.  Missing my Chicago brewing compatriots; brew strong, brothers.  I have one friend, though, who just moved to the area and is very interested in taking part, so I expect to have more company in the coming months.

Success rate
56.25% - 9 good
31.25% - 5 poor
12.5% - 2 undecided

I'm not sure if it's due to me getting out of practice with more time between brewdays or if I'm just getting sloppy, but my success rate has not been fantastic over the past year.  Fortunately my beers brewed in the last few months have all been pretty solid, so hopefully I've turned a corner.  The undecided samples include a Burton ale, which I won't even touch for another couple months, maybe not even until a half year from now; and my second Flanders red attempt, which I'm just letting sit for a good long while, though the samples have been very unflattering.

Meads/ciders brewed: 6
60% - 3 melomels
20% - 2 straight cider/perry
20% - 1 fruit cider

With DeAunn going off gluten last year, meads and ciders have become a new area of interest and excitement for me.  The melomels, including my first cyser, have been pretty terrific; the straight cider I made with apples we harvested ourselves was very dry (as expected) but with a great floral apple aroma (big ups to WLP775).  Looking forward to messing with honey, fruit, and spices even more coming up.

Non-brewing posts: 5
40% - 2 on hop growing
40% - 2 tastings
20% - 1 on home toasting grain

My "resolution" last year was to do more tastings; I haven't really made the inroads I'd planned there, but I'm going to redouble my efforts.  The home-toasted grain posts from the past couple years seem to see a lot of traffic; I hope they help other homebrewers experience the same success with them that I've had.

I have a couple more fermenters full of fermented (or fermenting) goodness on which to report, including a cyser with whole cherries and a rebrew of last year's popular (in these parts) session sour.  Stay tuned.

Winter IPAs

Blogging my brewing has been a great experience these past nearly two years, for a multitude of reasons.  For one, it's revealed some of my own preferences on the seasonality of imbibing.  As much as I like to experiment, I fall into a cyclical pattern with such stunning regularity that you could set your pagan solstice virgin sacrifices by it.  Namely, it's light, bright, hoppy beers during the warm months and dark, roasty beers (of varying heft) in the cold months.  Saisons and sours cut in from time to time, and meads have been mixing it up in the last half year, but there it is: the hardcore basics of my brewing calendar.  I'm not alone in this, I know, but it does make it all feel a little...simplistic.

Fortunately, one other feature of my normal winter brewing helps to break up the monotony.  After a few months of stygian, contemplative pints, I experience a hop deficiency freakout and brew something way out of the porter/stout category (such as last year's IIPA attempt, which has evolved into a pretty decent, fruity "American old ale," if you will).  This season I got more of a jump on this curve-wrecking endeavour, making my last brewday of 2012 an IPA partigyle.  The first (strong) portion became an all-Summit-hopped American

IPA; the latter runnings of this mash formed a "micro" IPA of low gravity and heavy "new school" late hopping.

This NB blog post on Summit inspired the big beer.  Having never used much of the variety, and only to bitter, I was intrigued by their aromatic and flavour descriptors.  This beer went without a traditional 60-minute charge, as I hoped to avoid the onion/garlic character this hop can reputedly bring in larger quantities when bittering.  Fortunately, having such a ridiculously high level of alpha acids, the first wort- and late hopping added plenty of IBUs.  I still had a cache of Vienna in my stores, which seemed like it would make for a very characterful base; just a sprinkling of Caramunich came along for added complexity (originally there was some simple sugar in the plan, but the first runnings were so rich it wasn't required to hit the OG).  Had I actually considered it and realized how close I was to doing a SMaSH beer beforehand, I would've gone all Vienna for the grist and had done with it.  My oatmeal stout's WLP007 yeast cake had been hanging out in the fridge for a few weeks since bottling, just waiting for an opportunity to get back to work.  It actually took a few days to get going (including sending up kind of scary large, floating chunks of yeast/trub in the carboy) but eventually got properly fired up, requiring a blowoff tube.

This wasn't my first time trying to create a low-gravity beer that delivered a wallop of hoppiness (not even since starting this blog) and there are now even a couple commercial examples that have captured the hearts and minds of beer drinkers across the country.  I'd already had in my long-term docket to give this concept another shot; putting it together with the Summit IPA in partigyle form seemed kismet.  For hops, I cruised my LHBS for the hottest and sexiest varieties of today; I was kind of shooting for the homebrewer's Top 40 chart toppers.  And I found them: Citra, Simcoe, and Galaxy.  With a little old leftover Galena for nominal traditional bittering, the rest of the kettle hops went in together as an hour-long hopstand (starting with 5 minutes of active whirlpooling) to further accentuate their late-use qualities.  I also added my 2012 homegrown Centennial cones for extra fun.  Unfortunately the final mash runnings came in too low to use on their own, so I threw in some spare DME and table sugar at the start of the boil to compensate.  The amount of simple sugar ended up constituting more of the fermentables than I'd prefer, so time will tell if I'll experience some of those fabulous "cidery" off-flavours older homebrewing tomes mention in their cautions against using sugar.

In an attempt to have a brewday experience to rival my last one in terms of ease and simplicity, I went full bore in prepping the night before: filtered (nearly) all the water needed, parsed out all hop mineral additions, pulled out (nearly) all the equipment, organized and labeled everything, etc.  With little left to chance, things went damn near like clockwork, despite the snow and running out of propane early on.  Two batches into the fermenters with all the heavy cleaning complete within eight hours.  That's the efficiency I like to see.

Dry hops are in the fermenters currently, and I'm very much looking forward to having some fresh, hoppy bottles in the fridge to share before too long.  Here's to sticking to my trend of bucking my trend.

Also..."Blogging my brewing."  I should just rename the blog with that one.

Partigyle: Summit IPA - Micro IPA
Summit
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.067
Projected SRM: 11.6
Projected IBU: 60.9
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 58%

Micro
Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.042
Projected SRM: 11.5
Projected IBU: ~40 (shot in the dark here)
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 26%

Grains
95.5% - 16 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
4.5% - 12 oz Weyermann Caramunich II

Hops
 Summit
1 oz Summit (18.0%) (FWH)
1 oz Summit (18.0%) (10 min)
2 oz Summit (17.6%) (Dry hop - 5 days)

Micro
.3 oz Galena (13.2%) (60 min)
1 oz Citra (13.9%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.5 oz Galaxy (14.0%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.5 oz Simcoe (13.0%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.6 oz Centennial (homegrown) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
1 oz Citra (Dry hop - 5 days)
.5 oz Galaxy (Dry hop - 5 days)
.5 oz Simcoe (Dry hop - 5 days)

Yeast
Summit - WLP007 Dry English Ale - cake from Toasted Oatmeal Stout
Micro - 1 pkg US-05

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

Water additions
SLC profile

Summit
10 qts Distilled water (mash)
2 g Epsom salts (mash)
2 g Gypsum (boil)

Micro
10 qts Distilled water (mash)

Brewday: 29 December 2012
Summit
Mash: 151F for 90 minutes
SG @ 6 gallons collected: 16.1P (1.066) - cut with 1 gallon water
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 14.1P (1.058)

Micro
Pre-boil volume: 6.8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 5.8P (1.023)
    Added 1 lb table sugar and 12 oz light DME to bring up SG

63F ambient to start fermentation.
Micro started within 24 hours, Summit within 36 hours; moved to 56F ambient to continue.

3 January 2013: fermentation very active; Summit required a blowoff tube.  Bumped up ambient temps to 60F once ferments settled down.

Micro Dry Hop: 8 January 2013

A few small clumps of yeast left floating, but should be plenty done with fermentation.

Summit Dry Hop: 12 January 2013

Bottled: 17 January 2013
Summit
FG: 1.013
ABV: 7.1%
Bottled with 4.4 oz table sugar.
Initial tasting suggests that a neutral American yeast might pair better than an English yeast, but time in the bottle will be more revealing. 

Micro
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.42%
Bottled with 3.5 oz table sugar.
Left on dry hops longer than intended as I missed my bottling window earlier in the week.
Huge fruity nose; DeAunn particularly noted peach.