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