Barleywine 2016

On the eve of 2016, I brewed the first installment of a planned annual barleywine project. Here's round two, brewed almost exactly a year later. The first beer really dried out, but after several months in the bottle, it's become more enjoyable. The new batch has retained a better balance of residual sweetness and hop bitterness and is pretty tasty right now. I'm tempted to punch it up a bit with dry hops before bottling (in the style of Stone's Old Guardian with Pekko dry hop) but I doubt I'll drink an appreciable amount before that addition fades. And this is a beer I plan to keep around for a while to appreciate. 



Barleywine 2016

Batch size: 3 gallons
Projected OG: 1.102
Projected SRM: 14.6
Projected IBU: 105.5
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 60%   

Grains
80.0% - 14 lb Great Western 2-row
11.4% - 2 lb Weyermann Munich II
5.7% - 1 lb C40
2.9% - 8 oz C80

Hops
.6 Millennium (15.6%) (60 min)
.5 oz Bravo (16.2%) (15 min)
.5 oz Chinook (11.9%) (15 min)
.5 oz Centennial (8.9%) (15 min)
.5 oz Bravo (10 min)
.5 oz Chinook (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (10 min)
1 oz Bravo (5 min)
1 oz Chinook (5 min)
1 oz Centennial (5 min)

Yeast
2 pkg US-05 (rehydrated)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
.5 tablet Whirlfloc (10 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno
8 g Gypsum, 5 g CaCl, 3 g Baking soda, 8 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 29 December 2016
Mash: 20 qts @ 151 F for 90 minutes
Sparge: 14 qts @ 200 F
Pre-boil volume: 6.1 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 17.5 P (1.0)

Target water profile: Balanced (brewersfriend.com)
Ca 109.2, Mg 3.0, Na 35.5, Cl 81.0, SO4 141.7
Alkalinity -19.7, RA -99.3, pH 5.25

3.5 gallons to fermenter at 56F. 1 minute pure O2. Fermented in swamp cooler at 58-60F ambient. After 3 days of active fermentation—and signs of krauesen beginning to drop—allowed swamp cooler to free rise, about 1F/day.

10 January 2017: Ambient temp rose to 63F & held for several days; moved swamp cooler out of brew closet, ambient rose to 65F & roused daily. Today all krauesen has dropped. Removed from swamp cooler to rise to room ambient (68F) & roused daily for a week or so.

Secondary: 26 February 2017
FG: 1.022
ABV: 10.7%

Bottled: 30 April 2017
Bottled 2 gallons with 1.7 oz table sugar, yeast nutrient, and rehydrated US-05.
Moved 1 gallon onto 1 oz boiled oak cubes.
Bottling yeast (US-05) acclimated to the beer’s high gravity 24 hours ahead of time by adding finished beer to the priming solution at a ~1:1 ratio with water.

American Strong Ale

During a stay in Boise a few months ago, some good friends invited me over to harvest Chinooks from their backyard bine. It was pretty late in the season for it, and the hops were a bit past their prime; unfortunately, they were also pretty well infested by aphids. Nevertheless, we had a good time picking sticky hops on a crisp autumn afternoon, and I took home and dried what ended up being about 3.5 ounces.

Well, what to do with Chinooks, a variety with which I have little experience? Take on something in the neighborhood of Tasty McDole's Arrogant Bastard clone attempt! I've been coming back around to Stone's bigger, less hop-focused (than Ruination, IPA, Delicious, etc.) beers, such as Old Guardian and Arrogant Bastard, as the thermometer's been dropping. Uncertain of the potency of the fresh hops, given their age at picking--they only lost half their weight at drying--I supplemented with Cascade and Centennial pellets.

I'm pretty pleased with this small batch, though the bitterness seems very low compared to the IBU estimate. Great classic American maltiness, though. I'm planning to use this recipe as a base for this year's barleywine, just amped up a bit; going to really push the bittering.

Bastardized - riff on CYBI Arrogant Bastard clone

Batch size: 3.5 gallons

Projected OG: 1.072
Projected SRM: 15.3
Projected IBU: 83.6
Boil time: 90 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 68%   

Grains
93.6% - 11 lb 2-row
6.4% - 12 oz C150

Hops
.3 oz Millennium (15.6%) (60 min)
1 oz Chinook leaf (6.5% est.) (15 min)
.5 oz Cascade (6.9%) (15 min)
.5 oz Centennial (7.6%) (15 min)
1 oz Chinook leaf (10 min)
.5 oz Cascade (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (10 min)
1.5 oz Chinook leaf (5 min)
1 oz Cascade (5 min)
1 oz Centennial (5 min)

Yeast
WLP007 Dry English Ale - 1.2-L starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno
9 g Gypsum, 3 g CaCl, 2 ml Lactic Acid (88%)

Brewday: 6 November 2016
Mash: 150 F for 3 hours
Pre-boil volume: 6.2 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 13.0P (1.051)

Transferred 4 gallons to fermenter. Fermented in swamp cooler at 66F.

Bottled: 26 November 2016
FG: 1.014
ABV: 7.7%
Bottled 3 gallons with rehydrated US-05 and 2.4 oz brown sugar.
Remaining gallon transferred to secondary with 1 oz home-toasted oak cubes (360F for 3.5 hours, sanitized with boiling water in microwave before adding). Planning to let it age long term and use for future blending.

American Sour Red

Last summer, I brewed a mixed fermentation blonde beer with a collection of propped-up bottle dregs. This year, I continued that tradition with a red beer.

While the rough outline of the recipe follows the Rare Barrel's base red beer, I used Best Mälz's RedX malt for the base to (hopefully) achieve a truly saturated red color. Flaked oats as well as wheat and rye malts joined the party for added malt complexity and mouthfeel. The barest sliver of Galena brings just over 5 IBUs to the batch.

Prior to boiling, I soured the wort with a lacto starter grown up from malt. I've followed this process with great success in the past, but this time around, it failed to produce any noticeable sourness. It may have been the short contact time: having found this method to make a big impact in previous batches, I only gave the starter 8 hours to work before boiling. At this point, however, my dregs culture has produced plenty of acidity, so no harm, no foul. I started this year's batch with Wyeast's French Saison yeast to consume some of the simpler sugars and produce some spicy esters before the Brett and bugs took hold and continued shaping the beer. At transfer, I didn't get any bold saison characteristics, which was in line with my expectations for this yeast's addition: subtle underlying complexity.

Since my 6-gallon carboy was otherwise occupied by mead, this batch spent its two months of primary fermentation in a plastic bucket. At transfer to secondary, the flavor was developing nicely, but might be more acetic than I'd prefer. It has since developed a nice pellicle and is aging happily. While I really enjoyed fruiting much of last year's blonde, most of the fruit I have on hand right now--farmer's market-procured pluots, peaches, and nectarines, all sliced, frozen, and vacuum packed in the freezer--don't strike me as a great pairing for a red beer. I do have some cherries from a year and a half ago, but they haven't been properly sealed and smell suspiciously like the smoked cheese we bought around the same time. This beer might be a good candidate for oaking.

I've planned a dark beer for next year's iteration. I'll still probably go with that, but may brew another blonde in the meantime to use all of the stone fruit I have hanging around right now. I may also start a new dregs culture; in my zeal to start this project, my existing culture received dregs from a few bottles that I'd prefer not to have in the mix. This spring I had a new culture going from a bottle each of Logsdon Farmhouse Cerasus (October 2014) and Cascade Blackcap Raspberry (2015) that was producing a fantastic strawberry character. I ended up adding it to the mix that went into the red, but I'd like to start over with that blend for future mixed fermentation beers. As far as the project overall, though, I don't regret a moment of it.

American Sour Red

Batch size: 5.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.063
Projected SRM: 15.3
Projected IBU: 5.2
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 62%

Grains
67.2% - 10 lb Best Mälz RedX
13.4% - 2 lb Weyermann Wheat
9.2% - 1 lb 6 oz Flaked oats
6.7% - 1 lb Rye malt
3.4% - 8 oz Aromatic

Hops
.1 oz Galena (16.0%) (60 min)

Yeast
250 ml Lacto starter (sour wort 8 hours)
Sour Cultures No. 1 (1/4 cup), 2, 3
WY3711 French Saison - 1 l starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
Target profile: Balanced (brewersfriend.com)
65.2 Ca, 8.5 Mg, 20.9 Na, 76.5 Cl, 86.7 SO4
Alkalinity 34.0, RA -17.5

Lacto starter: 28 May 2016
25 g DME with 250 ml water & pinch of yeast nutrient, with handful of malt
Kept in bucket with hot tap water & aquarium heater set to max (93F).

Brewday: 16 June 2016
Mash: 18 qts @ 156F for 60 minutes
Sparge: 20 qts @ 190F
Pre-boil volume: 7.2 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 13.2P (1.052)

Water additions (mash): 4 g Gypsum, 2 g Epsom salts, 1 g Salt, 4 g CaCl

Pre-acidified with 7 ml Lactic acid (88%), brought to quick boil, chilled to 115F, pitched Lacto starter. Covered in plastic wrap, kept warm for 8 hours; no noticeable souring took place. Boiled as usual.

Transferred 5.9 gallons at 15.8P to fermenter.
Chilled to 72F (warm ground water), put in swamp cooler at 62F to chill. Fermented in swamp cooler at 68F ambient, ramped to ambient (~75F) after 1 day active fermentation.

Secondary: 17 August 2016
SG: 1.012

Bottled: 1 May 2017
FG: 1.010
ABV: 7.0%
Bottled 4 gallons with 3.8 oz table sugar.
Bottling yeast (US-05) acclimated to the beer’s high gravity 24 hours ahead of time by adding finished beer to the priming solution at a ~1:1 ratio with water.
Moved 1 gallon onto 9.7 oz dried blueberries (rinsed in boiled water, sprayed with Star San) & .5 oz boiled oak cubes.

2015 Barleywine

I admire brewers that produce annual "special" beers. From Sierra Nevada Bigfoot to Mike Tonsmiere's funky dark saisons, these can make for some very special comparative samplings. While I do mark every twenty-five batches with a big, dark beer, alternating between imperial stouts and Baltic/imperial porters, it can be several years between these batches. Usually, very few bottles from each batch remain to compare to the next. So at the end of 2015, I finally brewed my first barleywine, which I plan to rebrew annually in some form and (mostly) save for vertical tastings.

I shot for an American interpretation, somewhat in the style of Bigfoot. In light of how my Munich II SMaSH turned out, that grain should lend plenty of malty oomph to augment the crystal additions. The hops are geared mostly for bitterness; I don't plan to drink this terribly young, so I'm not worrying too much about the aromatics. The smaller batch size should be enough to taste over the span of 2016 and still leave some for comparison with future iterations. I dig establishing a new tradition.

2015 Barleywine

Batch size: 3.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.109
Projected SRM: 14.9
Projected IBU: 127.7
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 59%

Grains/Fermentables
63.2% - 9 lb Rahr 2-row
15.0% - 2 lb Weyermann Munich II
5.3% - 12 oz C40
3.5% - 8 oz C80
14.0% - 2 lb Table sugar (primary)

Hops
1.1 oz Columbus (15.6%) (60 min)
2 oz Centennial (8.5%) (15 min)

Yeast
1 pkg US-05, rehydrated

Extras

1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
.5 tablet Whirlfloc (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
10 g Gypsum
6 g Epsom salts
2 g Salt
2 g Chalk
2 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 30 December 2015
Mash: 147F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o sugar): 13.9P (1.055)
Post-boil OG (w/o sugar): 20P (1.081)

Mash water target Mosher’s “Ideal Pale Ale” profile (110 Ca, 18 Mg, 17 Na, 50, Cl, 279 SO4).
3.75 gallons to the fermenter. 1 minute of pure O2 at pitching; reoxygenated 15 hours after pitching with no visible activity.
Fermented in swamp cooler at 60F ambient.

6 January 2015: First sugar addition, 1 lb dissolved in water. Lots of additional fermentation activity. Keeping swamp cooler temps at 60-61F, rousing yeast/off-gassing beer several times a day.

9 January 2015: Second sugar addition, 1 lb dissolved in water. Significant odor I associate with acetobacter, possibly from fermenting with lid only loosely placed on bucket rather than sealed w/ airlock. Might also be from first sugar addition, as odor only appeared after that. We'll see how it turns out.

Secondary: 30 January 2016
FG: 1.008
ABV: 13.5%
3+ gallons to carboy; ~1/2 gallon to growler with .5 oz home-toasted oak (boiled).
Hydrometer sample isn’t thin, but lacks the body and maltiness I’d expect from a barleywine. The bittering hops are very present but not explosive like a young Bigfoot; they lay on the back of the tongue and stay past their welcome.

Bottled: 30 April 2016
Much rounder, more pleasant, and more characteristically barleywine flavor after this time bulk aging. No acetic notes, improved body, and the hop bitterness has recede. Oaked growler didn’t exhibit a lot of oak character, but seemed just fine and went in the bottling bucket with the rest of the batch. Looking forward to tasting this carbonated, and looking forward to it even more next winter when I brew the next batch.
Bottled with 1.7 oz table sugar.

SMaSH I Tasting

Sadly, I haven't been able to fit in a brewday since the one when I started this batch and the Timothy Taylor Landlord clone, which sadly seems to have succumbed to oxidation. While I hope to brew in the final days of 2015 (and the early days of 2016) in the meantime it was definitely time for tasting notes on my first SMaSH beer. At the extreme end of base malts, I can now say that I definitely understand the flavor impact of Munich II when formulating future recipes. The hops, however, were too sparse to really make a statement; I'll dial up those for future batches.

=====

Appearance: Deep amber, trending toward orange at the edges with solid red highlights. Just a little hazy.

Smell: Super malty, a little sweet, lots of dark bread crust. This is a melanoidin-rich aroma. No discernible hop presence.

Taste: Bread crust through and through, richly malty, but without any lingering sweetness. A hint of fruitiness maybe. Just a touch of neutral hop bitterness on the end, leaving an aftertaste of warm bread.

Mouthfeel: Full, heavy for such a low-alcohol (4.3% ABV) beer. Carbonation is medium-low; present without being prickly, it's a bit above cask level.

Overall: Honestly, not a bad malty beer. It's fairly one-dimensional, which isn't hard to believe given the grain bill and relatively neutral yeast. Unfortunately, I'm left with no idea what the Nuggetzilla hops have to contribute in terms of flavor or aroma. This is ended up being a real malt bomb, which really switches it up from my normal brewing habits. It certainly isn't hard to drink, but tends to be a low-gravity sipper.

SMaSH I

Though I’ve been brewing for a number of years, I don’t always feel like I have a great sense of my ingredients. Case in point: when this summer’s pale ale came out rough and oniony, it wasn’t until my LHBS gave me a whiff of some Amarillo hops they had on hand that I believed they could’ve brought that character to my beer. In an effort to better understand what's going into my beer, I'm finally embarking on a series of SMaSH (Single Malt and Single Hop) beers. With a sole ingredient in each category, I can really wrap my head around what those ingredients offer.

One oft-reported downfall of SMaSH beers, though, is that they can come out pretty one-dimensional (by design, of course) and uninteresting. So for my first go-around, I went with the richest base grain I could find: dark Munich. For hops, I went kind of nutty with Nuggetzilla, a variety I've never used. While I probably should've stuck with a very neutral yeast like Cal Ale, I opted for Denny's Favorite to boost the interest level even more.

My efficiency has been riding somewhat low since the spring for some reason, so my OG was a bit lower than I'd hoped. Between the malt and yeast, though, the final product turned out ridiculously malty. This beer could really use more oomph in the hop bitterness--it definitely doesn't read as 46 IBUs--flavor, and aroma departments to balance all that malt. This is pretty much a dark Munich showcase, and it gets overwhelming pretty quickly. So for round one, I don't think I really allowed for much learning: I already had a good feel for Munich (and even dark Munich, to an extent) and I didn't add enough hops to get a solid impression of their character in any aspect. At least I learned more about how to conceive of SMaSH beers for next time.

SMaSH I
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.045
Projected SRM: 9.2
Projected IBU: 46.5
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 70%

Grains
100% - 10 lb Weyermann Munich II

Hops
.2 oz Nuggetzilla (15.4%) (60 min)
.8 oz Nuggetzilla (10 min)

1 oz Nuggetzilla (0 min - hop steep/whirlpool 30 min)

Yeast
WY1450 - slurry from Competition Pale Ale

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
.5 tab Whirlfloc (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno
Target water: “Balanced profile” from brewersfriend.com
5 g Gypsum
5 g CaCl
5 g Baking soda
3 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 7 September 2015
Mash: 13 qts @ 151F for 60 minutes - added 1 qt @ 212F to get to temp
1st sparge: 12 qts @ 212F
2nd sparge: 14 qts @ 180F
Pre-boil volume: 8.2 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.9P (1.035)

5.5 gallons to fermenter at 11.4P.
Ferment in swamp cooler at 65-67F.

Moved out of swamp cooler to ambient temps (60-68F) after 6 days of active primary, near end of activity.

Bottled: 19 September 2015
FG: 1.013
ABV: 4.3%
Bottled with 3.8 oz table sugar.

Tasting: 6 December 2015
Holy malt, Batman. Hops additions need to go up to be  noticed.

Session IPA II

My recent session IPA turned out to be a really remarkable beer: aromatic, full of flavor, and all at 3.4% ABV. Since it was so easy to make and had such a quick turnaround, I decided to give it a second run, changing just one variable, though it was a big one: the base grain.

While I'm still fond of beers with significant percentages of rye in the grist, it's high time I reached the end of the sack of Weyermann rye malt I've been working through. So on this batch, Vienna was out and rye was in. All other variables remained the same: the grist (including the base malt percentage), the hopping, the yeast (though it was a repitch of the washed cake from the first batch), and the fermentation conditions.

My past with rye has been sortid, and the runnings were predictably slow to emerge from the mash. I ended up heating the first runnings and adding it back as well as adding wetted rice hulls and giving it several hours to run off. I added a small amount of sparge water when the kettle volume came in low...which ended up pulling out the missing wort and giving me a higher than intended boil volume. The OG came in a bit higher than the first batch because of it.

I was surprised that the final gravity ended up being so high, but the beer isn't overly sweet. It is, however, incredibly thick and, to incorporate my favorite word for rye's mouthfeel, viscous. I bottled the batch with just a small charge of sugar to aim for a cask conditioned quality. In addition, I filled three one-gallon cubitainers; one went in as is, one received a half ounce of Centennial, and the third received a half ounce of Amarillo. After several days to carbonate, I took them in to BrewChatter, my LHBS, to share with the good folks there. The results were quite interesting: the straight version was very decent, the Centennial version seemed to accentuate the rye qualities, and the Amarillo was the most aromatic. I'll definitely continue to mess with the cubitainers for experimenting with dry hops and other late addition ingredients.

While this batch wasn't sweet, the rye is overwhelming; despite the low ABV, it's difficult to consume more than a glass at a time. I find the session IPA concept as a whole to be very sound, though: keep it malty by using characterful grains, mashing high, and not sparging; go with big late hopping; and use a yeast with a lot of its own character. This definitely fulfills a hop jones without nailing the drinker with an overabundance of alcohol. I suspect there will be more of this around as the weather continues to warm.

Session IPA II - The Rye (also posted at Brewtoad)

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.043
Projected SRM: 8
Projected IBU: 43
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 71%

Grains
83.3% - 7.5 lb Weyermann Rye malt
11.1% - 1 lb Flaked oats
5.6% - .5 lb Belgian Caramunich 80L

Hops

2.0 oz Amarillo (10.7%) (10 min)
.5 oz Columbus (15.6%) (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (11.3%) (10 min)
1.0 oz Amarillo (0 min) 30-min steep
.5 oz Columbus (0 min) 30-min steep
.5 oz Centennial (0 min) 30-min steep
.5 oz Centennial (Dry hop - 5 days) - Cask #2
.5 oz Amarillo (Dry hop - 5 days) - Cask #3

Yeast
Wyeast WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale - no starter

Water
Profile: Reno
9 g Gypsum
3 g CaCl
2 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 15 February 2015
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
No sparge (mostly) - added 5 qts @ 212F to get out
Pre-boil volume: 7.8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.7P (1.039)

Runoff was sticky; lautered about 2/3 before it stuck hard. Heated runnings to 185F & added back to mash tun. Also tried blowing out hose & adding two wetted handfuls of rice hulls.

Fermenter volume: 5.4 gallons
Fermented at 64-66F, raised to 70F near the end of fermentation.

Bottled: 28 February 2015

FG: 1.020!

ABV: 3.0%

Bottled with 2.1 oz table sugar. 3 gallons went into cubitainers: one plain, one with .5 oz Amarillo, one with .5 oz Centennial.

Session IPA

While I was still under the impression that my two recent saisons hadn't turned out (which more recent taste tests have proven false), I really wanted to make something quick and straight ahead (i.e.,

nothing too weird) to have on hand. Given the substantial (for me) amount of hops and diminishing supply of base grain I had on hand, I decided to try my hand at the "session IPA" genre again.

The Mad Fermentationist provided invaluable assistance, as always. Fortunately I still had just enough Vienna malt in the house for most of the grist, complemented with oats and Belgian Caramunich for enhanced mouthfeel, residual sugar, and further depth of flavor. I also went with my first no-sparge mash to increase body and malt perception. In addition, Wyeast's West Yorkshire Ale yeast provided extra character and low attenuation to round out the package. To keep things extra international, the hops were all American, plentiful, and were hopbursted, hop stand-ed, and dry hopped.

Unfortunately my laptop died at the end of the year and I have yet to replace it, so I was without my normal brewing software, BeerSmith. However, I had pretty good experiences with resources currently available online, including Brewtoad and Brewer's Friend. I was very happy with the no-sparge technique, though due to habit I really had to fight the urge to sparge the rest of the sugars out of the grain. The mash received what seemed like a massive amount of gypsum, though it should've been the correct dosing for the volume of strike water. Less wonderful was running out of propane shortly after putting the sweet wort on to boil; the brew moved back inside to finish. Between that, my friend Doug stopping in to check out the brew and have a beer, and the normal hectic nature of the brewday, I managed to swap my 10-minute and hop stand Amarillo additions, adding quite a few extra calculated IBUs; the finished beer doesn't seem to have suffered, though.

I pulled around a half gallon for cask conditioning in a cubitainer when the rest of the batch went to secondary for dry hopping. The "cask" was really fantastic; great aroma, super fruity and balanced. It seems like some of that dropped off in the secondary, possibly because of the size of the dry hop charge. The main batch is drinking just fine, however; I have no complaints about a lack of good beer  in the house ready to go. I've already rebrewed this recipe with a couple tweaks, one major, one minor; more on that soon. For now, though, things are tasting great.

Session IPA (also available at Brewtoad)

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.039
Projected SRM: 9
Projected IBU: 49
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 59%

Grains
83.3% - 7.5 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
11.1% - 1 lb Flaked oats
5.6% - .5 lb Belgian Caramunich 80L

Hops
2 oz Amarillo (10.7%) (10 min)
.5 oz Columbus (15.6%) (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (11.3%) (10 min)
1 oz Amarillo (0 min) 30-min steep
.5 oz Columbus (0 min) 30-min steep
.5 oz Centennial (0 min) 30-min steep
3 oz Amarillo (Dry hop - 6 days)
1 oz Columbus (Dry hop - 6 days)
1 oz Centennial (Dry hop - 6 days)

Yeast
Wyeast WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale - no starter

Water
Profile: Reno
9 g Gypsum
3 g CaCl
2 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 17 January 2015
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
No sparge
Pre-boil volume: 7.5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 8.5P (1.034)

Amarillo additions should have been 1 oz @ 10 min, 2 oz for hop stand.
Water report and chemical calculations from brewersfriend.com, using "light colored & hoppy" setting.

Fermenter volume: 5.8 gallons
Fermented at 64F, raised to 67F near the end of fermentation.

Secondary: 26 January 2015
Put some air into the beer when I had to restart the siphon mid-transfer. Extra ~1/2 gallon went into a 1-gallon cubitainer with .4 oz table sugar.

Bottled: 1 February 2015
FG: 1.013
ABV: 3.4%
Bottled with 2.2 oz table sugar.

Honorable Mention: Great Basin Brew-Off 2015 (Pale & Amber Ales)

Proserbräu

Steve, DeAunn's private teacher and a member of the orchestra here in SLC, has been a great friend to us in so many ways over the last three years. He's also one of the beer geekiest folks we know around here; we've enjoyed a number of get-togethers at his family's home where we shared new, interesting bottles with each other. Steve has a particular affinity for Belgians, so as we came to the end of our terminal degrees, nothing seemed so appropriate as brewing one for him.

Considering his favouring of beers such as Gulden Draak and Piraat, we aimed at crafting a Belgian strong. Vienna is my current go-to grain, as I'm working my way through a bag of Weyermann Organic Vienna; we augmented it with a bit of oats to add mouthfeel to what would be a fairly dry beer. A good dose of turbinado in primary increased dryness and colour, bringing it an amber hue. I've used the Duvel yeast strain on Belgian strongs in the past, but haven't cared as much for the "sharp" character it can bring. I was very happy, however, with the results I had with Belgian Abbey II in my Mad Elf clone a few years ago; in my aged quasi-side-by-side tasting, I actually preferred the rounded alcohol and more pronounced cherry presence of my version to Troeg's original.

My friend Brian came over to assist with part of brewday, including the ever-popular fermenter transfer/filtering out of hops. With his help, things went particularly smoothly. This was a small batch, and just about all of it went to its intended recipient; I only kept a six pack. I've had one so far; the yeast is even more muted than I'd intended, but it's still pleasant. Next time I'd probably push it to higher temps faster to try to increase ester production. So far it's hiding its alcohol very well; it's almost too easy drinking, and could cause some trouble if one weren't paying attention to consumption rate. Steve was really happy with our gift; DeAunn and I were pleased to be able to do something like this for someone who's done so much for us.

Proserbräu - Belgian Strong

Batch size: 3.7 gallons
Projected OG: 1.081
Projected SRM: 7.5
Projected IBU: 25.7
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 78%

Grains/Fermentables
79.0% - 8 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
11.1% - 1 lb 2 oz Quick oats
9.9% - 1 lb Turbinado sugar (dissolved in water, added as primary activity slows)

Hops
.4 oz Magnum (14.4%) (60 min)

Yeast
WY1762 Belgian Abbey II - 1-liter stirplate starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)
1 vial Clarity Ferm (pre fermentation)

Water additions (mash)
10 qts Distilled water (w/ 2 qts filtered SLC water)
1 g Gypsum
2 g Baking soda
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 16 March 2014
Mash: 149F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 5 gallons         
Post-boil SG (w/o sugar): 16.7P (1.069)

Aerated with 5 micron stone for 45 minutes.
Begin fermentation at 60F ambient; raise 3F/day after 24 hours of active fermentation, topping out at 72F.

21 March 2014: Added turbinado.

Secondary: 1 May 2014
FG: 1.009
ABV: 9.8%

Added 1.7 oz bourbon-soaked oak cubes.

Bottled: 24 May 2014
Bottled with 3.4 oz table sugar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Session Sour

My latest sour project has been to start playing with Brettanomyces, and I was particularly inspired by Colorado brewery Crooked Stave's all-Brett fermentations. Lacking the cellar space of our old place, which allowed me to tuck a fermenter out of the way for a year or more, I was interested in what I’d read about conducting primary fermentations with Brett; when left to do the bulk of the work, it can ferment as quickly (or even more quickly) than a traditional Saccharomyces strain. The quicker fermentation seems to usually result in a reduction of Brett’s normal funky character, however.

I planned for a session beer grist to further promote a quick fermentation; specialty additions of aromatic and Special B contributed to a gold-amber colour and possibly a little depth of malt character. Hops were minimal. Not having a lot of hands-on experience with the different strains (yet), I was intrigued by the pie-cherry descriptors used for Wyeast’s B. lambicus. To encourage the yeast to produce the character for which it’s known, I soured the wort overnight to drop the pH, mimicking what would happen in a more traditional sour fermentation that included lacto and/or pedio phase.

I brewed this literally just before we left for our Midwestern Christmas; I was chilling as DeAunn was loading the car (cos I’m a spectacular husband). It sat in the swamp cooler with the aquarium heater set to keep it fermenting warm(ish) for nearly a month before I got back; at that point, I cranked up the temp further, which yielded more activity. It should be pretty well ready to bottle; I just have to wait until my current cold abates so I don’t end up infecting it in the eleventh hour. Hoping this one turns out more like my raspberry Flanders red (success) than my regular Flanders (epic fail).

Session Sour

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.043
Projected SRM: 12.8
Projected IBU: 10.2
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 88%

Grains
76.9% - 5 lb 2-row
15.4% - 1 lb Aromatic
7.7% - 8 oz Special B

Hops
.2 oz Columbus (13.9%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 qt Lacto starter
1 pkg WY5526 Brettanomyces lambicus (no starter)

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

Water additions (mash)
5 qts RO water

Brewday: 20 December 2011
Mash: 156F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.1 gallons
Pre-sour SG: 8.2P (1.033)

Cooled wort to 110F & pitched lacto starter. No plastic shielding the wort surface. Kept warm for 11 hours, then boiled as usual.

No real sourness noted before boil, but as the wort came up to boiling, a light but firm citrus aroma was present. Post-boil wort tasted lightly tangy.

Fermented in swamp cooler at 68F ambient

15 January 2012: Some bubbles & yeast colonies on surface. Bumped ambient temp to 76F.  Noticeable jump in activity after a few hours.  After several days, cooled it down to upper 50s; following that, brought it out to warm up for bottling, but haven't yet had a chance to do so.

Bottled (gallon jug): 17 February 2012
FG: unmeasured
Fermented kettle extras in a Carlo Rossi jug.  Thought it was working on an acetobacter infection, but upon further inspection it seems to have been starting a Brett pellicle; the main batch is doing the same thing.  Will leave the main batch to see how it develops; bottled the small batch to check progress.
Bottled 3/4 gallon with .6 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

14 March 2012: Bottles from Rossi jug carbonated well, but were pretty thin and only exhibited a little sourness and Brett pie cherry character.  To encourage more Brett character to develop (and to hopefully enhance a pretty lifeless beer), added 15 fl oz concentrated Montmorency cherry juice.  Visible activity within a few days; will give it another couple months before checking on it.

One distributor notes concentrated cherry juice at 68 brix; have not factored in its impact on gravity.

Bottled: 15 June 2012
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.4%

Bottled with 4.3 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Tasting:  Freaking fabulous.  Quite tart (lacto) with cherry following and a hint of malt underneath.  This has been a great year-round beer, and while it's not for everyone, it's been very popular with sour fans.  A rebrew is currently underway.

Winter Spiced 90/-

While I often brew bigger, richer beers at the end of the calendar year and have been known to gift a few bottles around Christmas, I’ve never done a “holiday beer”; the few commercial winter warmers I’ve had, often heavily spiced, have usually underwhelmed me.  Given the approaching season and my new attitude on using spices, though, I thought it might be time to give it a shot.

My aim was for something rich and malty without becoming as heavy as an old ale or barleywine, with spices reminiscent of the flavours of the season.  I planned a Scottish 80/-, but between good extraction and boiling down the first runnings, my efficiency jumped enough to put this in the 90/- range (in homebrew terms, of course).  To push the malt-forward nature of this beer, nearly a third of the grist was Vienna, with another fifteen percent being crystal malts.  The aroma in the kitchen on brewday was incredible; the wort smelled like milk chocolate.  After primary, the gravity sat at a respectably medium-bodied 1.016.

Additions to the secondary included ground nutmeg and a cinnamon stick, along with some small oak pieces from the stave I had sitting in my Flanders red that didn’t turn out.  Brought to about a medium toast in the oven, the pieces went with the spices into a container of Jim Beam for better than a month.  This should be a treat to quaff in a bad Christmas sweater this holiday.

Holiday 2011

Batch size: 5.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.058
Projected SRM: 14.0
Projected IBU: 21.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 90%

Grains
52.6% - 5 lb 2-row
31.6% - 3 lb Vienna
10.5% - 1 lb C20
5.3% - 8 oz Special B

Hops
1 oz EKG (5.8%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY1728 Scottish ale (no starter)

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)
1 oz Oak cubes, medium-dark toast, bourbon soaked (secondary)
1 Cinnamon stick, bourbon soaked (secondary)
1/8 tsp Ground nutmeg, bourbon soaked (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
8 qts RO water
1 g Epsom salt
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 29 October 2011
Mash: 156F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o 1st runnings): 8P (1.032)

First runnings smell (and taste) really chocolatey!

Boiled down first runnings to a thick syrup; added back at end of boil

Fermented in the swamp cooler at 60F ambient

Secondary: 11 November 2011
FG: 1.016
ABV: 5.5%

Bottled: 8 December 2011
Pretty thin taste; cinnamon present as general spiciness
Bottled with 3.6 oz table sugar

Tasting: Unbalanced and underwhelming, unfortunately.  I've learned "empirically" that there's a good reason spiced beers are usually higher in alcohol: that extra ethanol (in addition to residual sugars, I'd imagine) balance the contributions of the spices.  In this beer, the bourbon character became cloying.  In addition, the bottles seemed to foam like nobody's business; no hint of infection, just foam for days.

Scotch Rye - FAIL

There are times when no matter what you do, the brewday goes horribly awry.  Then there are times when it’s flawed from the earliest planning stages.  This was one of the latter.

I’ve waxed poetic here about my experiences brewing with rye, with all the hassles and pleasures inherent in doing so.  My recent all-rye 70/- has actually turned out to be a wonderful beer; I’ll post a tasting on its murky goodness soon.  After having success with session-strength beers in this vein, I wanted to go after a big one: a Scotch ale, aka wee heavy.  Brewing a big nearly-all-wheat beer last winter went well; the failure on that batch was getting it to carbonate.  So I had high hopes for this one.

The recipe was about as simple as it gets: Weyermann rye malt to an OG of 1.075, English hops for bittering to 25 IBUs, and a big slurry of Wyeast 1728.  To further increase the maltiness, boil down the first runnings to a thick syrup during the rest of the sparge and boil.  If only it was simple in execution.

Trouble started early.  As difficult as rye can be to lauter, it’s equally difficult to mill.  My faithful drill peters out when I put it to work on wheat and rye, so it means it’s back to the hand crank for those beers.  This grist made for a LOT of time spent sweating over my mill.  I broke it up into four separate conditioning and milling sessions so I could actually get through it.

The mash went fine, and I was able to run off about a gallon of first runnings to boil down on the stove.  And then everything ground to a halt.  The mash set, and there was no unsticking it.  I decocted several times and infused with the sparge water at a boil to thin the mash and raise the temperature to 170F and higher, but to no effect; only a trickle would come out of the mash tun, and that little bit would stop altogether after a short time.  The wort in the mashtun was incredibly viscous, almost like room-temperature molasses; I should’ve photographed it for posterity.  My best guess is that especially at its high gravity, the rye wort’s viscosity was just too much for my bazooka screen to handle.

In the end, I ended up scooping out the mashtun, running the mash through a colander to salvage what I could of the batch; plenty of extra particulate ended up in the kettle.  After laboriously collecting 5 gallons of wort this way, I went ahead with the boil.  After an ugly 75 minutes, it was even thicker than before; the

refractometer sample was almost comically gooey, and the kettle contents were so viscous they wouldn’t pass through my funnel strainer, so I eventually removed it and dumped everything into the primary.  On top of this, the first runnings cooked down far enough that they scorched the bottom of the stovetop kettle, so crusty black flecks from that also ended up in the carboy.

After all this, I ended up with 3 ½ gallons of post-boil wort, along with all the stuff I would’ve preferred to leave behind, in a 6-gallon carboy.  This didn’t stop this monster from going crazy once the yeast cake it sat atop got to work.  I came home a couple days later to find the fermentation temperature had spiked enough to bring the swamp cooler temp to nearly 70F and blow off the airlock.  Let me repeat this: 3 ½ gallons of wort blew off the airlock on a 6-gallon carboy.  Intense.  It had made it this far, so it only seemed fair to clean up carboy, sanitize the opening, and recover it to let the yeast finish out whatever they could still do this thing.

When it came time to transfer to secondary, less than half of what was in the carboy was beer; the larger portion was trub.  Even after primary, the viscosity was so great I couldn’t get it through the racking cane.  I had to just dump the top layer of beer from the carboy into secondary, a 4-liter wine jug, the only helpful

utensil being the funnel.  I didn’t even bother taking a gravity reading; I pitched some rehydrated champagne yeast to hopefully lower the gravity further and thin out this beast.  If that doesn’t do it, I may resort to a pedio/brett regimen.

This has been a serious learning experience for me.  Possibly barring my experiences with infections, it’s also been my most frustrating batch.  I still have about a third of a sack of Weyermann rye to go; what all I’ll make with it I’m not sure, but it won’t be another beer like this.  I’ve had success with all-rye beers as well as with high-gravity beers; I plan to brew more of both, but I probably won’t combine these two concepts again.  Every batch has something to teach; some just deliver their messages more indelibly than others.  For the record, I do NOT recommend this recipe; it's here for posterity.  It definitely deserves a "brewer beware" mark of some type; if I come up with a good one, it'll appear here.

Scotch Rye

Batch size: 3.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.091
Projected SRM: 14.3 (not accounting for boiled-down first runnings)
Projected IBU: 39.3
Boil time: 75 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 55%

Grains
 100% - 20 lb Rye

Hops
1 oz Progress (6.2%) (75 min)
.5 oz Northdown (7.2%) (75 min)

Yeast
WY1728 Scottish Ale yeast - cake from Toasted Rye

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (30 min)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
 15 qts RO water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Salt

Brewday: 16 October 2011
Mash-in: 152F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 19P (1.079)

First gallon of first runnings reduced to a thick syrup on the stove, charring to a degree; added back before boil

HELLACIOUS LAUTER FAIL.  Multiple decoctions & infusions did little.  Eventually scooped & crudely strained through a colander to 5 gallons before starting boil; refractometer sample was unbelievably viscous.  Was so thick it wouldn’t even go through strainer, so everything went into the fermenter

Fermented in swamp cooler at 55-60F ambient



18 October 2011: Even though the beer only filled about half the carboy, it blew off the airlock and spiked the swamp cooler temp to 68F.  Cleaned up and replaced airlock with tin foil, back in swamp cooler at 55-60F

22 October 2011: Massive amount of particulate matter finally settling out; rye keeps beer from clearing, but there’s now liquid separate from the break, hops, and other junk in the carboy.  Out of swamp cooler at 65F ambient

Bottled: 17 February 2012
FG: unmeasured
Still incredibly thick; couldn’t start a siphon and ended up pouring it into the bottles.
Bottled 3/4 gallon with .6 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.