Session Baltic Porter

I like porters. I really like Sinebrychoff. And it's cold out now, so I've been jonesing for dark and malty beers pretty hard lately. But I'm also looking for more session-strength beers so I can keep drinking, rather than being knocked out after a bottle or two of high-octane stuff. So here we are.

Lower-gravity English porters are fantastic, but I wondered what a scaled-down Baltic porter would be like. With session beers, I try to stick to a few of Mike Tonsmiere's basic guidelines to preserve flavor in a smaller package:

 - Use more characterful base malts
 - Use a higher percentage of character malts
 - Aim for a higher saccharification rest temperature
 - Select a less attenuative, more expressive yeast strain

First three items: check. While the Wyeast German Ale strain doesn't really fit Parameter 4, it should keep the finished beer a bit more lager like, in the style of the original. Bring on the little big beer.

Minibrychoff - session version of Sinebrychoff Baltic Porter

Batch size: 5.75 gallons (5 finished gallons)
Projected OG: 1.044
Projected SRM: 32.4
Projected IBU: 23.5
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 70%   

Grains
57.1% - 5 lb Weyermann Vienna
22.9% - 2 lb Weyermann Munich II
11.4% - 1 lb Weyermann Carafa Special III
8.6% - 12 oz Weyermann Caramunich III

Hops
.3 oz Millennium (15.6%) (60 min)
2 oz Saaz (3.0%) (10 min)

Yeast
WY1007 German Ale - .6L stirplate starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (10 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno
Target profile: London (brewersfriend.com)
Ca 94.5, Mg 3.0, Na 10.0, Cl 65.1, SO4 54.3
Alkalinity as CaCO3 83.7, RA 14.6

Brewday: 26 November 2016
Mash: 155F for 90 minutes (1 qt @ 212F added to reach temp)
Pre-boil volume: 7.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.7P (1.038)

Water additions: 3 g Gypsum, 4 g CaCl, 5 g Chalk, 2 ml Lactic acid (88%)

5.3 gallons to fermenter. Fermented in swamp cooler at 58F ambient.

28 November 2016: High krauesen & blowoff at 58F or even slightly lower. Krauesen starting to fall, so warmed swamp cooler to 60F; will continue to raise temp ~5F every 12 hours to 68F.

20 December 2016: Fermentation has been finished for a week or more. Moved fermenter to garage (50F) until bottling.

Bottled: 19 January 2017
FG: 1.016
ABV: 3.7%
Moved 1 gallon onto 1 oz oak cubes (boiled) and 1 gallon onto .1 oz Seville orange peel, .1 oz cinnamon stick, and 1 oz toasted coconut, all soaked in Jim Beam for a couple weeks.
Bottled 3.25 gallons with 3.7 oz brown sugar and rehydrated US-05.

Bottling #2: 26 February 2017
Bottled 2 gallons (oaked, spiced) together with 2.0 oz brown sugar and rehydrated US-05. The oak and the coconut really come through; the coconut is particularly fantastic.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter

A couple summers ago, I had a chance to try DuClaw Brewing Company's Sweet Baby Jesus. It's not much of a summer beer, but it made for a great sipper one late night in a smoky, air-conditioned central Pennsylvania bar. I'm an admitted sucker for chocolate; coupled with a rich but not overbearing peanut butter presence, I was sold from the first taste. Of course there was nothing for it but to make one myself. When a deal on PB2 peanut butter powder came up last fall, I jumped on it; much of the oil has been removed, making it more suitable for use in beer than other forms of peanuts. I'd planned to make this beer this coming fall, but when I realized that the expiration date on the PB2 was approaching, it became clear its time had come.

Not necessarily looking to clone DuClaw's beer, I started my recipe from scratch. The plan was for a big base beer--an imperial porter--to lend a big malty backbone upon which I could layer the peanut butter and chocolate additions. Brown malt has had a very positive impact on my dark beers in the last few years, particularly in a brown porter from earlier this year that aimed at using the grain for forty percent of the grist. The oats went in to add their characteristically slick mouthfeel; the toasting was to add colour and a cookie/malt complexity. The lactose and English yeast conspired to keep the beer from finishing too thin; the low mash temp worked to keep it from finishing too high. By the numbers, the final gravity is just about where I'd like it; this isn't meant to be a light summer drinker.

I've messed with adding chocolate to beer before, usually with cacao nibs in secondary, but have found myself mostly unsatisfied with the results. Not having a lot of experience with baker's chocolate or cocoa powder, I went for broke and used both at separate points in the brewing process. Following some highly technical internet searching, the PB2 seemed the clear choice for adding the peanut butter element. However, it seemed as though it might take quite a bit to make a real impact on the final beer. Again, I went big, adding two full pounds of the powder over the course of the process.

The brewing process could best be summed up with the word "sludge." High-pressure sprayers and long, hot OxiClean soaks left the fermenters no worse for wear, thankfully. My friend Graham, fellow low brass player and sometimes homebrewer, helped out on brewday; it was nice to have assistance filtering out as much of the post-boil sediment as possible. I was surprised to find that the gravity increased following the secondary peanut butter and chocolate additions, which leaves the gravity reading following primary in some question. The sample at bottling had a pleasant peanut butter presence, though the chocolate could've been more substantial. I don't plan to consume much of this over the next few months of intense heat, but I do look forward to trying it once carbonation is complete, and hopefully enjoying it over the fall and winter.

Update: The peanut butter character pretty over the top, but the chocolate was lacking. The bottles spent the summer in a very warm (80F+) environment, and I kept worrying over the peanut oil going rancid. In the end, this batch really didn't end up being what I'd hoped it would be, and I dumped most of the bottles. May someday return to this concept, upping the chocolate, toning down the peanut butter, and brewing it on the cooler end of the year.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter

Batch size: 4 gallons
Projected OG: 1.085
Projected SRM: 34.4
Projected IBU: 29.4
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 67%

Grains/Fermentables
57.2% - 8 lb Malteurop 2-row
21.4% - 3 lb Crisp Brown malt
10.7% - 1.5 lb Toasted organic quick oats - roasted @ 350F for 15 min, 400F for 15 min
3.6% - 8 oz Crisp Chocolate malt
7.1% - 1 lb Lactose (10 min)

Hops
.6 oz Magnum (14.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale - cake from Brown Malt Porter (w/ 1-liter starter)

Extras
16 oz PB2 peanut butter powder (5 min)
4 oz Unsweetened baker’s chocolate (5 min)
16 oz PB2 (secondary)
8 oz Organic cocoa powder (secondary)
2 Vanilla beans, chopped and scraped (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
8 qts RO water (w/ 8.5 qts filtered SLC water)
1 g Baking soda
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 14 May 2014
Mash: 147F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 5.8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 14.6P (1.060)

Ferment in swamp cooler at 64-66F.

17 May 2014: Fermentation slowing; brought swamp cooler up to 68F. Agitated periodically.

Secondary: 30 May 2014
FG: 1.026
ABV: 7.7%

Sample was on the boozy side, but had decent chocolate notes and a slight hint of peanut butter in the background.

Bottled: 28 June 2014
FG: 1.030 - backsweetened by the peanut butter & chocolate?
Bottled with 2.8 oz table sugar (2.3 volumes C02).

Tasting notes: Lots of peanut, not a lot of chocolate, going rancid after being stored too warm too long? Sadly, a dumper.

Apple Pie Cyser

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

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

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

Apple Pie Cyser

Projected OG: 1.085
Volume: 2 gallons

Fermentables
2 gallons Farnsworth Farms Cider
2 lb Cox Honeyland Honey

Yeast
WLP775 English Cider

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Batch #100 - Imperial Raspberry (Blackberry) Vanilla Porter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fermented in swamp cooler, started at 65F ambient

4 August 2012
SG: 1.024

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

Vanilla: 7 September 2012
Oak: 9 September 2012

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

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

Saison with Citrus

A couple events conspired to bring about this breath of sunnier times.  First, while the White Labs Platinum Saison II I used for the Petit Hiver fit that beer well, I really missed the more expressive character of the Wyeast French Saison yeast I’d originally wanted to propagate for a batch of Belgian dark strong ale in the new year.  Second, our local Whole Foods put 5-pound bags of California mandarin oranges on sale at the beginning of December.  It was time to bring a little bit of summer to the Utah winter.

I put together a simple low-gravity grist–base malt, white wheat, a little light crystal for sweetness–threw in an ounce of citrusy Amarillos, and ramped up the fermentation temperatures to push the esters on the yeast.  While this was in primary, there was another sale, this time on satsumas, so my citrus addition to secondary doubled.  I skinned and froze the citrus; I also zested the first bag of fruit, but by the time it came to

transfer to secondary it had started smelling funky, so I tossed it.  All told, I had six and a half pounds of citrus flesh go into secondary with the base beer, which had fermented pretty far down and was nice and estery.

Secondary has been cool to preserve as much of the citrus aromatics as possible.  Even better, I took this opportunity to properly wash yeast for the first time, with great success; I have a thick slurry of 3711 ready to tear through that coming BDSA sometime next month.  In the meantime, we’ll have an light summery beer to break up the line of dark beers and help us forget about the skiing weather outside for a while.

Sunshine Saison - saison de table with mandarins & satsumas

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.043
Projected SRM: 4.2
Projected IBU: 21.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 90%

Grains
76.9% - 5 lb 2-row
15.4% - 1 lb White wheat
7.7% - 8 oz C 20

Hops
.5 oz Amarillo (9.3%) (FWH)
.7 oz Amarillo (15 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY3711 French Saison (no starter)

Extras

6.5 lb mandarins & satsumas, crushed & frozen (secondary)
23 mandarins worth of zest (secondary)

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

Brewday: 27 November 2011
Mash: 10 qts @ 148F for 75 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 8.2P (1.033)
Sat for about 12 hours before the boil - no souring occurred

Started in swamp cooler at ~68F ambient; ramped up to 80F after 3 days

Secondary: 11 December 2011
SG: 1.006
Adjusted OG (w/ citrus): 1.048
Zest (sprayed with Star San, stored in tupperware container in fridge) smelled gamey, so skipped it this time.  Stick to fresh!

Bottled: 21 January 2012
FG: 1.003
ABV: 5.9%
Bottled with 4.2 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast

Initial tasting: Strikes me as overly puckering.  DeAunn likes the bready quality it has in the aftertaste.

Blueberry Stout

As it is for many homebrewers, my first-ever extract batch was an American pale ale kit, whcih made good sense in the Honolulu climate.  For the second batch, though, I went for something more winter themed: a Murphy’s Irish Stout clone with 5 pounds of frozen blueberries added at flameout.  Far from a typical dry stout, it ended up big and winey, and was definitely the most popular of my early batches.  In late 2009, I put together an all-grain batch in the same mold; again, it went over well, especially with DeAunn.  I thought I’d taken a hiatus from stouts and porters for now, but when Lisa, a new school friend of ours, found out about these past beers and volunteered to buy the blueberries for a new batch, I certainly wasn’t going to say no.

The base beer was originally going to be a moderate-gravity milk stout with lactose and medium-dark crystal for residual sweetness, and a pound of roasted barley and 4 ounces each of American and British chocolate malts for roast complexity.  I unwittingly measured out 8 ounces each of the chocolates into a bag together at the LHBS; with nothing else to do about it, I added a few more pounds of base malt to move this one into the foreign export range.  I’d already bought a smack pack of London Ale III–my first time using this strain, and looking for its reported fruitiness to accentuate the blueberry addition to come–but with a much higher-gravity wort than originally expected and no time to do a starter, I added a couple tablespoons of Nottingham slurry.

After primary and a couple weeks sitting warm, Lisa brought over 10 pounds of frozen blueberries.  There was some stress with the spigot on the secondary fermenter I planned to use not sealing properly, so I cleaned out and sanitized my 6-gallon carboy I’d used for primary, put it all back in there, and waited for the inevitable blowoff.  I kept it cool so the blueberries’ fermentation wouldn’t get too rocking; even so, with the carboy so full there was a bit flooding the airlock after a few days.  I punched down the swelling blueberries and replaced the airlock with aluminum foil; the blueberries were still fermenting away and pushing out a bit of fluid through the carboy opening by the time we left for the midwest for the holidays, but the fermentation seemed to be slow and steady instead of violent, which should be aided by the low thermostat setting while we’re gone.

I won’t be back to bottle this beast for almost a month.  I fully expect the blueberries to ferment out completely and for the skins to impart a tannic, winey quality as had happened in the previous batches; with a high finishing gravity going into secondary, though, I hope there'll be plenty of residual sweetness to balance it.  This should be an enjoyable way to ride out the early dark months of 2012.

Blueberry Stout Strikes Back - Base

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.077
Projected SRM: 44.6
Projected IBU: 19.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 95%

Grains/Fermentables
70.6% - 9 lb 2-row
7.8% - 1 lb US roasted barley
6.0% - 12 oz C 80
3.9% - 8 oz US chocolate
3.9% - 8 oz UK chocolate
7.8% - 1 lb Lactose (0 min)

Hops
1 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY1318 London Ale III (no starter)
2 tbsp Nottingham (slurry)

Extras
10 lb Frozen blueberries (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
6 qts RO water

Brewday: 26 November 2011
Mash: 15 qts @ 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o lactose): 13.3P (1.054)

Fermented in swamp cooler at 63F ambient

2 December 2011: Krauesen has fallen; out of swamp cooler and into main area (65-70F ambient) to clean up

Secondary: 16 December 2011
SG: 1.025
OG (adjusted w/ estimated blueberry contribution): 1.085
Kept in 50F ambient room

Bottled: 5 February 2012
FG: 1.017
ABV: 8.9%
Bottled with 4 oz table sugar.

Tasting: A hit.  Vinous character from the blueberries is most prominent aspect, dominating even over all that roasted grain.  This one will keep coming back.

The week in brew

I have a couple new beers in the fermenters that I still need to write up, but thought I’d switch up the format a bit and cover some of my other homebrew-related stuff going on in the past few days here.

Thursday I cooked up a couple batches of chili (one with meat for me, the other vegetarian for DeAunn) based on Sean Paxton’s recipe, which first rocked my world in the spring. I kept it pretty much the same, though I simplified the meat bill; the vegetarian version got black beans and diced red potatoes in place of the meat. My batch got a bottle of Old Rasputin (always a winner) while DeAunn’s employed a local option: Epic Brewing’s Smoked Porter. The smoke phenolics went well with the chipotle pepper I added to the vegetarian chili. Both batches turned out exceptionally, and we still have a little of each left to enjoy. We complemented them with some sharp cheddar and whole wheat crackers.

Thursday night, I finally managed to bottle my Holiday 2011 and chocolate-mint-oatmeal stout. The Holiday was pretty easy; the sample seemed bland, but as the rye 70/- started out the same way and really came into its own in the bottle, I’m not too worried. The stout was a bit messier; the cocoa powder had formed a rocky doppelganger krauesen in secondary, which made my original plan to whirlpool it all to the middle of the fermenter less of a great idea. Even after giving it some time to settle before racking, the beer ran off looking like really dark chocolate milk. I added vanilla extract and all of my mint tincture, but the mint wasn’t really coming across, so on a whim I added some of the mint extract we had in the cupboard. It wasn’t until after I added it that I read the label: it’s an alcohol-free extract that includes sunflower oil, which caused it to bead up in the bottling bucket. I kept stirring as I bottled to hopefully keep it in solution long enough for it to get into the bottles, but at least the mint aroma was there. The bottles have already formed chunky cocoa krauesens, and we’ll just have to see if they develop any head at all with the oil in there. I’m also still trying to get the mint aroma out of my bottling bucket and plastic bottling pieces.

After some excitement Friday morning involving the dog, a chocolate cookie, an emergency vet visit, and some induced vomiting, I made it down to the LHBS to pick up the packet of Wyeast Brett L I special ordered for an upcoming batch, along with grains for said batch and an extra fermenting bucket. Then late Friday night, DeAunn and I cracked open the reserve bottle of my last blueberry stout, now more than two years old, with a friend. This friend has volunteered to buy the blueberries for a new batch, so the time was right for sharing. It’s mellowed a lot, and has traded much of its winey quality for more blueberry flavour, a pleasant surprise.

The only action Saturday saw was the prepping of two starters. The traditional one of Denny’s Favorite 50 (WY1450) went on the stirplate, and looks to have already finished up. The other was a lacto starter made of table sugar and a bit of base malt kept warm with an aquarium heater; that one will keep going pretty much right up until pitching time to grow as much as possible.

Sunday morning I put the new bucket to work as a secondary for a citrus saison; more on that coming soon. Six and a half pounds of frozen mandarins and satsumas floating in five gallons of beer looks pretty cool, in my humble opinion, especially with the temperatures outside right now. I also washed the yeast cake for a Belgian dark strong in the new year. Now I’m just waiting on those blueberries to arrive so I can rack the stout onto them and leave it until the middle of next month when I get back from Chicago.

Next on the brew docket is a pretty simple pale ale and an attempt at a low-gravity “quick” sour/funky beer. Don’t know yet if there’ll be time to get one or both done before leaving town for the holiday, but it sure would be nice to do so. Writeups on the beers in primary coming soon, too.

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.

Chocolate Mint Oatmeal Stout

Ah, back to the colder end of the year.  The leaves have finally started to come down off the trees en masse, and the mountains look incredible covered in snow.  Of course, my personal preference is for shorts weather.  But the chill does bring a marked change to the brewing schedule; it’s now entirely appropriate to make some of my favourite types of beer.  Those of the dark, malty, roasty, full-bodied variety.  And since I’ve started to more fully explore spices in my beer, I might as well bring along some of them for the season.  Ted Danyluk's Mint stout struck me as a tasty possibility when I read about it a couple years ago, and pretty much every year I try to add chocolate to at least one beer.  I felt a plan coming together.

For the base beer, I wanted a smooth, mouth-filling, not-too-roasty oatmeal stout.  I went easy on the heavily roasted grains and included some dark crystal to hopefully impart a little bit of  lasting sweetness and dark fruit character.  Since I’m looking to add mint to this batch, I went with Northdown hops, which reputedly have a woody, minty flavour; that probably won’t come through very much from the bittering addition, but they did give a solid, moderate bitterness.  I went with a significant portion of flaked oats to add a lot of slickness and mouthfeel.  For extra fun, I lightly toasted half of them; much like when I did the same thing with rye malt, the oats in the oven made the house smell incredible.

Brewday started off with a cereal mash for the oats, and moved forward in uncomplicated fashion from there.  Our new friends Craig and Cait came over for a bit while I ran around like an idiot trying to remember what needed to happen next for the brew (which anyone who’s brewed with me can attest is par for the course); the

four of us have a lot of fun hanging out, even when I’m making myself manic on a brewday.  When transferring to secondary, I really liked the muted roastiness the beer had.  It finished drier than I’d hoped, though I don’t think it’s a terribly big issue; if that’s my goal, though, perhaps next time I’ll wisely use a lower attenuating yeast.

Chocolate in beer, particularly stout, I’ve done before.  It’s never quite turned out how I wanted, though; I’ve ended up with much more roast and coffee than the cocoa flavour I wanted.  I’ve added cocoa powder to the boil and cacao nibs (unroasted, I believe, which may have been part of the problem there) to secondary; this time I’m going with cocoa powder, made into a paste with hot water and added to secondary.  Upon tasting the cocoa paste that wouldn’t get off the spoon at transfer time, I may add some vanilla extract at bottling to balance the roast.  Next time I may just try a high-quality commercial chocolate extract; if it works for Rogue, it’ll probably be all right for me.

Adding mint...that’s uncharted territory for me.  From my incredibly exhaustive research, it sounded like it could get overpowering quickly, so instead of adding anything to the boil or secondary, I made a tincture of fresh spearmint leaves (which I crushed by hand to encourage extraction) and dried peppermint that I’ll add to taste at bottling.  The concoction looks kind of hideous in the container, as the leaves are extremely wilted; the aroma, though is very intense, kind of like putting an entire pack of spearmint gum in your mouth.  I’m curious to see how this flavour and aroma will play with the roast.  I can taste the holidays already.

CMO Stout - chocolate, mint & oatmeal

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.057
Projected SRM: 26.1
Projected IBU: 25.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 78%

Grains
58.5% - 6 lb 2-row
29.3% - 3 lb Flaked oats, 1.5 lb lightly toasted
4.9% - 8 oz C120
4.9% - 8 oz Pale chocolate
2.4% - 4 oz Roasted barley

Hops
1 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
WLP 007 Dry English Ale (slurry)

Extras
10 oz Ghirardelli cocoa powder paste (w/ hot water) (secondary)
Vanilla extract, to taste (bottling)
2/3 oz Fresh spearmint leaves, vodka soaked (bottling, to taste)
3 g Dried peppermint leaf, vodka soaked (bottling, to taste)

Water additions (mash)
7 qts RO water

Brewday: 28 October 2011
Cereal mash: 1 lb 2-row with oats @ 135F for 15 minutes; boil for 20 minutes
Mash-in: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons

Fermented in swamp cooler at 60F once visible fermentation started; took a few days before the slurry took off

Secondary: 11 November 2011
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.9%

Tasting: The cocoa powder and alcohol-free peppermint extract destroyed this batch; the beer is chunky and cloudy, and it smells like the sunflower oil has gone rancid in the bottles.  Dumped the batch.

Petite Hiver

While my interest in session beers isn’t new, it was again spurred by our new home’s liquor laws that, among other things, limit beer sold (on tap at least) to 3.2% ABW (4% ABV).  Not that I’m planning to jump into commercial brewing here (or even getting a keg setup) but this seemed like a perfect opportunity to take up the challenge of getting as much flavour as possible out of a small amount of raw materials.  My recent rye 70/- may not make the grade, unfortunately; coming in at just 3.1% ABV, the hydrometer sample at bottling was very watery.  There may be more hope for the second beer from that brewday, a spiced petite saison noire, which derives much more of its character from the yeast and spices.

Saison is a very loose style, varying greatly in strength, colour, spicing, level of funkiness, etc.  I’d originally planned a big, burly saison noire with wintry spices, based on a Zymurgy article from a couple years back, for the early part of this year; when the yeast starter didn’t take off, switching to dry yeast, ditching the spices, and changing the hopping schedule transformed it into a tongue-flaying black IPA.  I’ll come back to that

high-octane saison sometime; being in a session mood, and having plans for the yeast following this batch, I scaled it back to table strength for this winter.

“Holiday spices” (cloves, ginger, allspice, nutmeg) have rarely agreed with me in beer, though there have been notable exceptions.  However, I’ve added a number of other non-Reinheitsgebot elements to beer before, including fruit, chocolate, cacao nibs, and vanilla and coffee beans.  Branching out ever so slightly, this batch will get a cinnamon stick as well as a couple vanilla beans.  My normal method for adding spices like these is to make a tincture and add the spices and liquid to secondary; I’ve tried adding them at the end of the boil, but haven’t felt as though they really came through very well.  My spices here have been marinating in a small amount of vodka for the best part of a week, I’ll hopefully be able to transfer this beer onto them in the next couple days.

My go-to saison yeast is Wyeast’s French Saison (3711), but unfortunately my LHBS was out; they recommended the White Labs Platinum strain Belgian Saison II (566) as their closest sub.  The plan was to use this low-gravity batch as a yeast starter for a Belgian dark strong ale I’m planning for next month; the last BDSA I brewed (with a cake of Wyeast 3787) finished out at a miserable 1.050, so I was anxious to see what the 3711, a ferocious attenuator in my experience, would do to a really big beer.  The ester profile of this saison de la table will determine whether I forge ahead using this yeast cake or track down a fresh smack pack and get a normal starter on the stirplate.

Especially with the spices, this small beer didn’t need too many other flavours competing for dominance.  Munich provided a malty base, with a bit of rye to add a touch of body; along with darkening the beer, the Carafa and Special B added a light roast and a little dark fruit character, respectively.  The brew went into the wee hours of the morning; especially at that hour, the weather's finally starting to get crisp.  I’m hoping this will be a lighter cold-weather alternative to the bigger, boozier beers I’ll brew this season.  It also has me feeling adventurous enough to consider doing another sessionable batch with some of those “pumpkin pie” spices that normally give me pause, to serve at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Petite Hiver - a petite saison noire spiced for winter

Batch size: 4.75 gallons
Projected OG: 1.040
Projected SRM: 25.7
Projected IBU: 14.9
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 80%

Grains
69.0% - 5 lb Munich
13.8% - 1 lb Rye
6.9% - 8 oz Organic Carafa II
3.4% - 4 oz Special B

Hops
.5 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 vial WLP566 Belgian Saison II (no starter)

Extras
1 Cinnamon stick, soaked in vodka (secondary)
2 Vanilla beans, chopped and scraped, soaked in vodka (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
4 qts RO water

Brewday: 2 October 2011
Mash-in: 150F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.25 gallons

Fermented at ambient temp (67F) for 3 days, then ramped up to 80F over 3 days

Secondary: 22 October 2011

Bottled: 12 November 2011
FG: 1.010
ABV: 3.9% - UT street legal success!
Bottled with 4.6 oz table sugar